Hulunbuir’s administrative area

Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia is a prefecture-level city with an exceptionally large administrative area: its municipal government gives about 253,000 km². This is a broad region of settlements, grassland, and forests, not a continuous urban built-up area. Calling it the “world’s largest city by area” therefore requires the qualification that the comparison concerns administrative boundaries; a global record depends on which kinds of jurisdictions are compared.