This article details the list of the most populous settlements in Malaysia. Malaysia designates all populated regions into three categories: a district, municipality, or city. While district boundaries are limited to individual state-drawn district boundaries, some municipalities and cities are made up of several smaller component districts whose elevated status forms a local government. Thus, this list does not include component districts and only includes overall administrative localities defined by their respective local governments.

Within defined boundaries

This table lists all cities, municipalities and districts in Malaysia whose population exceeds 250,000 people, according to statistics published in the 2020 Malaysian census by the Malaysian Department of Statistics (DOSM). There are 34 populated regions in Malaysia whose population exceeds 250,000 people. All 13 states and the Federal Territories have at least one city, municipality or district whose population exceeded 250,000 people. This table displays:

Distribution

There are 34 settlements in Malaysia with a population of over 250,000 people. All 13 states and the Federal Territories have at least one settlement in the list. West Malaysia has more settlements that fit this criterion than East Malaysia, with 29 settlements against the East's five. The states with the smallest number of settlements in this list are Kelantan, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, Terengganu and the Federal Territories, with one locality each respectively, while the state with the highest number of settlements with a population above 250,000 is Selangor, with 10 settlements in the list.

Gallery

Largest metropolitan areas by population

The DOSM does not provide any definitions related to metropolitan areas in Malaysia, nor have any statistical calculations that concern build-up areas surrounding an urban centre. However, several major urban regions, such as the Klang Valley, the George Town Conurbation and the Johor Bahru Conurbation (Southern Conurbation), have been well-described as metropolitan areas since the early-2010s by local media and government authorities in the latest edition of the National Physical Plan. Despite this, there remains some ambiguity in defining the actual boundaries of other smaller counterparts. There are 12 metropolitan areas in Malaysia. Perlis and Kelantan are the only states without one. The George Town Conurbation, the only urban region that spans three different states (Penang, Kedah and Perak), is also the only metropolitan area where the core city is not its most populated settlement (George Town has a population of 794,313, while Seberang Perai has a population of 946,092). This table displays:

Citations

Academic journals and publications

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