Manjunath PaparajuandSameh Khamis
1dc5a67518
A pack of the world's settlements of 15,000 people or more (31,827 places,
1.6 MB, CC0) built from the Wikidata Query Service by
scripts/build-wikidata-cities.mjs. src/data/wikidataCities.js reads it on the
first lookup and answers the nearest city to a point, the cities around it,
a city by name ("Paris, France", or the nearest namesake in view) and a
country's name in the page language. Names match without accents or case.
The build leaves out groupings of settlements (metropolitan areas,
agglomerations) and places that no longer stand, keeps a city that is also a
narrower grouping kind (Istanbul) or a unit dissolved where nothing else
names the spot (the Vietnamese provincial cities of 2025), fills a country
from the area a place lies in, splits a population band the service cannot
answer in time, and fails if well-known cities are missing or a known
grouping gets in. The app never calls Wikidata itself.
Co-authored-by: Sameh Khamis <[email protected]>
2.2 KiB
Wikidata cities pack
World cities and towns for naming a spot (the nearest city), the places
around it and finding a place by name, read by src/data/wikidataCities.js. The app reads this file; it
does not call Wikidata or any place service for these.
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
cities.json |
Human settlements with coordinates and a population at or above the cut-off (see meta.minPopulation), largest first |
Each row is [name, lat, lon, population, country, wikidata]: the English
label, coordinates to three decimals, the largest stated population, the
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (empty when Wikidata gives none) and the
Wikidata id.
Source: Wikidata, read once from the Wikidata Query Service by
scripts/build-wikidata-cities.mjs. The build time and row count are in the
file's meta header.
License: CC0 1.0 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Licensing). No attribution is legally required.
What is left out: metropolitan areas, urban agglomerations, conurbations and similar groupings of settlements, so a view is named after the city rather than the area around it (an item of a narrower grouping kind that is also a city stays: Istanbul is a metropolitan municipality and a megacity); places that no longer stand (former entities, ghost towns, abandoned villages, archaeological sites) unless they are also a living settlement; and places Wikidata states as dissolved or abolished (P576) where another place within 15 km still names the spot. A dissolved unit with nothing else near it stays: many of Vietnam's provincial cities ended as units in 2025 and still stand under their names. Also left out: places below the population cut-off and places without an English label.
Rebuild: node scripts/build-wikidata-cities.mjs [--min-population 15000].
The build runs one query at a time with pauses and honours the service's
Retry-After; it takes about ten minutes. It fails if a short list of
well-known cities is missing from the result, or a known grouping gets in.
Limits: populations are whatever Wikidata states and differ in date and definition between places (city proper, municipality, urban district). Some districts and suburbs appear as their own rows.