Times change, 17thC India had a higher standard of living per capita than England.
All cities have their moments in the sun when I would like to have been living there
(as a free male citizen, that is) here are some of them.
BC
Troy, late-13th century
Memphis, 2,500
Mohenjo-daro, 2,500
Ur, 2100
Mycenae, 1250
Hattusa, 1000
Babylon, 600 (Nebuchadnezzar) the first city to have more than 200,000 inhabitants
Athens, 435
Persepolis, 300
AD
Hatra, 200
Rome, 250
Ctesiphon, 500
Teotihuacan ('The City of the Gods", the sixth largest city in the world, 30 miles north of Mexico City), 600
Xian, 650
Baghdad, 750 (the first city with over 1,000,000)
Kyoto, 850
Cordova, 1000
Tulum, 1150
Sukhotha, 1200
Hangzhou, 1250
Milan, 1300
Angkor Wat, 1400
Bruges, 1450
Venice, 1450
Florence, 1450
Vijaynagar, 1500
Mexico City, 1500
Agra, 1570
Istanbul, 1650
London, 1750
St Petersburg, 1800
Paris, 1920s
Berlin, 1920s
New York, the fifties
London, the sixties (1825, the first city over 5 million)
Bristol, the seventies
Sydney, the nineties.
and now - none.