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Cities · Dominican Republic · capital
Santo Domingo, 
Dominican Republic
4,600,064 people lived in Santo Domingo in 2025. It is the 92nd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in the Dominican Republic, where it is the capital.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Santo Domingo's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Santo Domingo grew
Count 10 people in Santo Domingo in 1975 and the same count gives 36.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.3 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes five million people between 2035 and 2040.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Santo Domingo through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Santo Domingo in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Dominican Republic · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 17 cities in the Dominican Republic in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Santo Domingo; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Santo Domingo covered 512 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 130 km² of it. That is 28 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.6 times its size, and its people are 3.7 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in the Dominican Republic
Its share of the Dominican Republic
Of every 100 people in the Dominican Republic in 2025, 40 lived in Santo Domingo, which is 4.6 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares stand for everyone in the Dominican Republic, one square for every 100th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Santo Domingo's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 88 Islāmābād Pakistan4,860,084
- 89 Kano Nigeria4,840,280
- 90 Hong Kong Hong Kong4,749,543
- 91 Saint Petersburg Russia4,736,499
- 92 Santo Domingo4,600,064
- 93 Cape Town South Africa4,508,921
- 94 Casablanca Morocco4,457,471
- 95 Mogadishu Somalia4,399,430
- 96 Harbin China4,376,259
In the Dominican Republic, 2025
- 92 Santo Domingo4,600,064
- 792 Santiago de los Caballeros681,087
- 2324 La Romana250,479
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Santo Domingo are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Santo Domingo publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries