This statistic represents the ** countries with the lowest degree of urbanization in 2018. In 2018, ** percent of the population of Burundi were living in urban areas.

In 2025, the degree of urbanization worldwide was at 58 percent. North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean were the regions with the highest level of urbanization, with over four-fifths of the population residing in urban areas. The degree of urbanization defines the share of the population living in areas defined as "cities". On the other hand, less than half of Africa's population lives in urban settlements. Globally, China accounts for over one-quarter of the built-up areas of more than 500,000 inhabitants. The definition of a city differs across various world regions - some countries count settlements with 100 houses or more as urban, while others only include the capital of a country or provincial capitals in their count. Largest agglomerations worldwideThough North America is the most urbanized continent, no U.S. city was among the top ten urban agglomerations worldwide in 2023. Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan was the largest urban area in the world that year, with 37.7 million inhabitants. New York ranked 13th, with 21.4 million inhabitants. Eight of the 10 most populous cities are located in Asia. ConnectivityIt may be hard to imagine how the reality will look in 2050, with 70 percent of the global population living in cities, but some statistics illustrate the ways urban living differs from suburban and rural living. American urbanites may lead more “connected” (i.e., internet-connected) lives than their rural and/or suburban counterparts. As of 2021, around 89 percent of people living in urban areas owned a smartphone. Internet usage was also higher in cities than in rural areas. On the other hand, rural areas always have, and always will, attract those who want to escape the rush of the city.

The Census Bureau released revised delineations for urban areas on December 29, 2022. The new criteria (contained in this Federal Register Notice) is based primarily on housing unit density measured at the census block level. The minimum qualifying threshold for inclusion as an urban area is an area that contains at least 2,000 housing units or has a population of at least 5,000 persons. It also eliminates the classification of areas as “urban clusters/urbanized areas”. This represents a change from 2010, where urban areas were defined as areas consisting of 50,000 people or more and urban clusters consisted of at least 2,500 people but less than 50,000 people with at least 1,500 people living outside of group quarters. Due to the new population thresholds for urban areas, 36 urban clusters in California are no longer considered urban areas, leaving California with 193 urban areas after the new criteria was implemented.

The State of California experienced an increase of 1,885,884 in the total urban population, or 5.3%. However, the total urban area population as a percentage of the California total population went down from 95% to 94.2%. For more information about the mapped data, download the Excel spreadsheet here.

Please note that some of the 2020 urban areas have different names or additional place names as a result of the inclusion of housing unit counts as secondary naming criteria.

Please note there are four urban areas that cross state boundaries in Arizona and Nevada. For 2010, only the parts within California are displayed on the map; however, the population and housing estimates represent the entirety of the urban areas. For 2020, the population and housing unit estimates pertains to the areas within California only.

Data for this web application was derived from the 2010 and 2020 Censuses (2010 and 2020 Census Blocks, 2020 Urban Areas, and Counties) and the 2016-2020 American Community Survey (2010 -Urban Areas) and can be found at data.census.gov.

For more information about the urban area delineations, visit the Census Bureau's Urban and Rural webpage and FAQ.

To view more data from the State of California Department of Finance, visit the Demographic Research Unit Data Hub.

The Urban Areas dataset was compiled on May 31, 2023 from the United States Census Bureau (USCB) and is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)/Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). The TIGER/Line shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line shapefile is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. After each decennial census, the Census Bureau delineates urban areas that represent densely developed territory, encompassing residential, commercial, and other nonresidential urban land uses. In general, this territory consists of areas of high population density and urban land use resulting in a representation of the urban footprint. There are 2,645 Urban Areas (UAs) in this data release with either a minimum population of 5,000 or a housing unit count of 2,000 units. Each urban area is identified by a 5-character numeric census code that may contain leading zeroes. A data dictionary, or other source of attribute information, is accessible at https://doi.org/10.21949/1529088

The lowest rural population rates are found in some of the smallest countries in the world and city-states and areas, such as Gibraltar, Monaco, and Singapore, where the whole population lives in urban areas. Apart from these, Qatar is the country with the lowest rural population rate in the world. There, less than one percent of the population lives in rural areas. Belgium follows behind Qatar with less than two percent living in rural areas. On the other hand, Papua New Guinea has the largest rural population in the world.

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of June 2023 and will retire in December 2025. A new version of this item is available for your use.The layers going from 1:1 to 1:1.5M present the 2010 Census Urbanized Areas (UA) and Urban Clusters (UC). A UA consists of contiguous, densely settled census block groups (BGs) and census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements (1000 people per square mile (ppsm) / 500 ppsm), along with adjacent densely settled census blocks that together encompass a population of at least 50,000 people. A UC consists of contiguous, densely settled census BGs and census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements, along with adjacent densely settled census blocks that together encompass a population of at least 2,500 people, but fewer than 50,000 people. The dataset covers the 50 States plus the District of Columbia within United States. The layer going over 1:1.5M presents the urban areas in the United States derived from the urban areas layer of the Digital Chart of the World (DCW). It provides information about the locations, names, and populations of urbanized areas for conducting geographic analysis on national and large regional scales. To download the data for this layer as a layer package for use in ArcGIS desktop applications, refer to USA Census Urban Areas.

The web map presents the Census 2020 Urbanized Areas (UA) and Urban Clusters (UC). For the 2020 Census, an urban area will comprise a densely settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density and/or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.This layer uses the US Census Bureau 2020 Urban Area source TIGER/Line data and corresponding List of 2020 Population Attributes.

U.S. Census Urbanized Areas represents the Census 2000 Urbanized Areas (UA) and Urban Clusters (UC). A UA consists of contiguous, densely settled census block groups (BGs) and census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements (1000ppsm /500ppsm), along with adjacent densely settled census blocks that together encompass a population of at least 50,000 people. A UC consists of contiguous, densely settled census BGs and census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements, along with adjacent densely settled census blocks that together encompass a population of at least 2,500 people, but fewer than 50,000 people. The dataset covers the 50 States plus the District of Columbia within United States.

For the 2020 Census, an urban area will comprise a densely developed core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density requirements, along with adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses as well as other lower density territory included to link outlying densely settled territory with the densely settled core. To qualify as an urban area, theterritory identified according to the criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or at least 5,000 persons.Fields include: UACE20 5 String 2020 Census urban area code GEOID20 5 String 2020 Census urban area identifier; 2020 Census urban area code NAME20 100 String 2020 Census urban area name NAMELSAD20 100 String 2020 Census name and the translated legal/statistical area description for urban area LSAD20 2 String 2020 Census legal/statistical area description code for urban area MTFCC20 5 String MAF/TIGER Feature Class Code (G3500) UATYP20 1 String 2020 Census urban area type FUNCSTAT20 1 String 2020 Census functional status ALAND20 14 Number 2020 Census land area AWATER20 14 Number 2020 Census water area INTPTLAT20 11 String 2020 Census latitude of the internal point INTPTLON20 12 String 2020 Census longitude of the internal pointhttps://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/data/tiger/tgrshp_rd18/TGRSHPRD18_TechDoc.pdf

USA Census Urban Areas provides the boundaries, and 2020 U.S. Census names, codes, populations, and housing information for the urban areas of the United States.For the 2020 U.S. Census, an urban area comprises a densely settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000. Urban areas represent densely developed territory, and encompass residential, commercial, and other non-residential urban land uses.The sources for this layer are the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 Census Urban Areas TIGER/Line data and the corresponding List of 2020 Census Population attribute fields.

The urbanization rate in Africa was estimated at nearly **** percent in 2024. Urbanization on the continent has increased steadily since 2000, when close to ** percent of the total population lived in urban areas. This share is expected to increase further in the coming years. However, the proportion of the rural and urban population varies significantly on the continent. In 2024, Gabon and Libya were the most urbanized countries in Africa, each exceeding ** percent. In contrast, Burundi and Niger registered the lowest urbanization rates, which recorded only ** and ** percent of their populations living in urban areas, respectively. Overall, the degree of urbanization on the continent was lower than the world average, which was set at ** percent as of 2025. In that year, Africa and Asia were the continents with the lowest urbanization rate.

The extent of urbanisation varies greatly between Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions across Queensland. The most urbanised regions are in the east and south — South East Queensland NRM region (15.50%), Reef NRM region (4.10%), Burnett Mary NRM region (2.80%), and Wet Tropics NRM region (2.27%) — while western and northern regions remain least urbanised.

The functional urban area (FUA) classification identifies small urban areas and rural areas that are integrated with major, large, and medium urban areas to create FUAs.

Workplace address and usual residence address data from the 2018 Census of Population and Dwellings were used to identify satellite urban areas (1,000–4,999 residents), and rural statistical area 1s (SA1s) from which at least 40 percent of workers commuted to urban areas with more than 5,000 residents.

An FUA includes Urban rural (UR) 2018 urban areas, rural settlements and rural SA1s where there is: an urban core, one or more secondary urban cores, one or more satellite urban areas, and rural hinterland (rural settlements or rural SA1s).

The FUA indicator (IFUA) classifies UR2018 urban areas and rural SA1s according to their character within their FUA, e.g., urban core, satellite urban area. The information from the Stats NZ classification can be accessed using the classification tool Ariā.

The 53 FUAs are classified by population size. The urban core’s population rather than the entire FUA’s population is used to maintain consistency between the descriptions of UR2018 urban area and FUA type (TFUA).

FUAs that have more than 100,000 residents living in their urban core are known as metropolitan areas, while smaller FUAs are divided into large (core population 30,000–99,999), medium (core population 10,000–29,999), and small regional centres (core population 5,000–9,999).

Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

For more detail, and classifications, please refer to Ariā.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

The urban–rural continuum classifies the global population, allocating rural populations around differently-sized cities. The classification is based on four dimensions: population distribution, population density, urban center location, and travel time to urban centers, all of which can be mapped globally and consistently and then aggregated as administrative unit statistics.Using spatial data, we matched all rural locations to their urban center of reference based on the time needed to reach these urban centers. A hierarchy of urban centers by population size (largest to smallest) is used to determine which center is the point of “reference” for a given rural location: proximity to a larger center “dominates” over a smaller one in the same travel time category. This was done for 7 urban categories and then aggregated, for presentation purposes, into “large cities” (over 1 million people), “intermediate cities” (250,000 –1 million), and “small cities and towns” (20,000–250,000).Finally, to reflect the diversity of population density across the urban–rural continuum, we distinguished between high-density rural areas with over 1,500 inhabitants per km2 and lower density areas. Unlike traditional functional area approaches, our approach does not define urban catchment areas by using thresholds, such as proportion of people commuting; instead, these emerge endogenously from our urban hierarchy and by calculating the shortest travel time.Urban-Rural Catchment Areas (URCA).tif is a raster dataset of the 30 urban–rural continuum categories for the urban–rural continuum showing the catchment areas around cities and towns of different sizes. Each rural pixel is assigned to one defined travel time category: less than one hour, one to two hours, and two to three hours travel time to one of seven urban agglomeration sizes. The agglomerations range from large cities with i) populations greater than 5 million and ii) between 1 to 5 million; intermediate cities with iii) 500,000 to 1 million and iv) 250,000 to 500,000 inhabitants; small cities with populations v) between 100,000 and 250,000 and vi) between 50,000 and 100,000; and vii) towns of between 20,000 and 50,000 people. The remaining pixels that are more than 3 hours away from any urban agglomeration of at least 20,000 people are considered as either hinterland or dispersed towns being that they are not gravitating around any urban agglomeration. The raster also allows for visualizing a simplified continuum created by grouping the seven urban agglomerations into 4 categories.Urban-Rural Catchment Areas (URCA).tif is in GeoTIFF format, band interleaved with LZW compression, suitable for use in Geographic Information Systems and statistical packages. The data type is byte, with pixel values ranging from 1 to 30. The no data value is 128. It has a spatial resolution of 30 arc seconds, which is approximately 1km at the equator. The spatial reference system (projection) is EPSG:4326 - WGS84 - Geographic Coordinate System (lat/long). The geographic extent is 83.6N - 60S / 180E - 180W. The same tif file is also available as an ESRI ArcMap MapPackage Urban-Rural Catchment Areas.mpkFurther details are in the ReadMe_data_description.docx

People using at least basic sanitation services, urban (% of urban population) in Euro area was reported at 99.07% in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Euro area - People using at least basic sanitation services, urban (% of urban population) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Urban areas comprise a densely-settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density and/or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or a population of at least 5,000. These areas were delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau following the 2020 Decennial Census. For additional information, see: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html. For FAQs see: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ua/Census_UA_2020FAQs.pdf.

The urban areas created by the US Census Bureau "represent densely developed territory, and encompass residential, commercial, and other nonresidential urban land uses. Each urban area must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or at least 5,000 people." They were created by the Bureau following the 2020 census based on the population and housing unit density of individual blocks. The 2020 Census increased the urban population and housing unit count requirements for the first time since 1910, resulting in differences between the 2010 and 2020 boundaries beyond those resulting from population change. In addition, they also stopped distinguishing between "urbanized areas" and "urban clusters" and renamed areas as needed to reflect the updated boundaries. Please see the US Census Bureau website for more information.

These may be wholly in the region, or in part. This geography can be used to display and analyze data from the 2020 census, and data from the American Community Survey (ACS) containing the year 2020 to present.For the 2020 Census, an urban area will comprise a densely settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density and/or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or a population of at least 5,000.Census Blocks will nest inside Urban Areas, but other census geographies may not.

People using at least basic drinking water services, urban (% of urban population) in Euro area was reported at 99.9% in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Euro area - People using at least basic drinking water services, urban (% of urban population) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

The Census Bureau has completed the delineation of the Census 2020 urban areas (UA) and urban clusters (UC). The Census Bureau identifies and tabulates data for the urban and rural populations and their associated areas solely for the presentation and comparison of census statistical data. For Census 2020, the Census Bureau classifies as urban all territory, population, and housing units located within an urban area (UA) or an urban cluster (UC). It delineates UA and UC boundaries to encompass densely settled territory, which consists of:

- core census block groups or blocks that have a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and

- surrounding census blocks that have an overall density of at least 500 people per square mile

In addition, under certain conditions, less densely settled territory may be part of each UA or UC.

The Census Bureau's classification of rural consists of all territory, population, and housing units located outside of UAs and UCs.