The average for 2023 based on 27 countries was 74.4 percent. The highest value was in Belgium: 98.19 percent and the lowest value was in Slovakia: 54.03 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In the year 1500, the share of Western Europe's population living in urban areas was just six percent, but this rose to 31 percent by the end of the 19th century. Despite this drastic change, development was quite slow between 1500 and 1800, and it was not until the industrial revolution when there was a spike in urbanization. As Britain was the first region to undergo the industrial revolution, from around the 1760s until the 1840s, these areas were the most urbanized in Europe by 1890. The Low Countries Prior to the 19th century, Belgium and the Netherlands had been the most urbanized regions due to the legacy of their proto-industrial areas in the medieval period, and then the growth of their port cities during the Netherlands' empirical expansion (Belgium was a part of the Netherlands until the 1830s). Belgium was also quick to industrialize in the 1800s, and saw faster development than its larger, more economically powerful neighbors, France and Germany. Least-urban areas Ireland was the only Western European region with virtually no urbanization in the 16th and 17th century, but the industrial growth of Belfast and Dublin (then major port cities of the British Empire) saw this change by the late-1800s. The region of Scandinavia was the least-urbanized area in Western Europe by 1890, but it saw rapid economic growth in Europe during the first half of the following century.

The statistic shows the degree of urbanization in OECD countries in 2018. In 2018, ******* had the highest degree of urbanization among OECD countries, with ** percent of the population residing in urban areas.

European Union urban population for 2023 was 339,749,258, a 0.53% increase from 2022.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>European Union urban population for 2022 was <strong>337,959,006</strong>, a <strong>0.61% increase</strong> from 2021.</li>
<li>European Union urban population for 2021 was <strong>335,914,718</strong>, a <strong>0.1% increase</strong> from 2020.</li>
<li>European Union urban population for 2020 was <strong>335,583,292</strong>, a <strong>0.38% increase</strong> from 2019.</li>
</ul>Urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects. Aggregation of urban and rural population may not add up to total population because of different country coverages.

It is estimated that Europe had an urbanization rate of approximately 8.5 percent in the year 1800. The Netherlands and Belgium were some of the most heavily urbanized regions, due the growth of port cities such as Rotterdam and Antwerp during Netherlands' empirical expansion, and the legacy of urbanization in the region, which stems from its wool and craft industries in medieval times. Additionally, the decline of their agricultural sectors and smaller territories contributed to a lower rural population. Scotland and England had also become more urban throughout the British Empire's growth, although the agricultural revolution of the previous two centuries, along with the first industrial revolution, then led to more rapid urbanization during the 19th century. In contrast, there was a large imbalance between the east and west of the continent; the two largest empires, Austria and Russia, had the lowest levels of urbanization in Europe in 1800, due to their vast territories, lower maritime presence, and lack of industrial development.

In 2025, Moscow was the largest city in Europe with an estimated urban agglomeration of 12.74 million people. The French capital, Paris, was the second largest city in 2025 at 11.35 million, followed by the capitals of the United Kingdom and Spain, with London at 9.84 million and Madrid at 6.81 million people. Istanbul, which would otherwise be the largest city in Europe in 2025, is excluded as it is only partially in Europe, with a sizeable part of its population living in Asia. Europe’s population is almost 750 million Since 1950, the population of Europe has increased by approximately 200 million people, increasing from 550 million to 750 million in these seventy years. Before the turn of the millennium, Europe was the second-most populated continent, before it was overtaken by Africa, which saw its population increase from 228 million in 1950 to 817 million by 2000. Asia has consistently had the largest population of the world’s continents and was estimated to have a population of 4.6 billion. Europe’s largest countries Including its territory in Asia, Russia is by far the largest country in the world, with a territory of around 17 million square kilometers, almost double that of the next largest country, Canada. Within Europe, Russia also has the continent's largest population at 145 million, followed by Germany at 83 million and the United Kingdom at almost 68 million. By contrast, Europe is also home to various micro-states such as San Marino, which has a population of just 30 thousand.

The empirical dataset is derived from a survey carried out on 25 estates in 14 cities in nine different European countries: France (Lyon), Germany (Berlin), Hungary (Budapest and Nyiregyha´za), Italy (Milan), the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Utrecht), Poland (Warsaw), Slovenia (Ljubljana and Koper), Spain (Barcelona and Madrid), and Sweden (Jo¨nko¨ping and Stockholm). The survey was part of the EU RESTATE project (Musterd & Van Kempen, 2005). A similar survey was constructed for all 25 estates.

The survey was carried out between February and June 2004. In each case, a random sample was drawn, usually from the whole estate. For some estates, address lists were used as the basis for the sample; in other cases, the researchers first had to take a complete inventory of addresses themselves (for some deviations from this general trend and for an overview of response rates, see Musterd & Van Kempen, 2005). In most cities, survey teams were hired to carry out the survey. They worked under the supervision of the RESTATE partners. Briefings were organised to instruct the survey teams. In some cases (for example, in Amsterdam and Utrecht), interviewers were recruited from specific ethnic groups in order to increase the response rate among, for example, the Turkish and Moroccan residents on the estates. In other cases, family members translated questions during a face-to-face interview. The interviewers with an immigrant background were hired in those estates where this made sense. In some estates it was not necessary to do this because the number of immigrants was (close to) zero (as in most cases in CE Europe).

The questionnaire could be completed by the respondents themselves, but also by the interviewers in a face-to-face interview.

Data and Representativeness

The data file contains 4756 respondents. Nearly all respondents indicated their satisfaction with the dwelling and the estate. Originally, the data file also contained cases from the UK.

However, UK respondents were excluded from the analyses because of doubts about the reliability of the answers to the ethnic minority questions. This left 25 estates in nine countries. In general, older people and original populations are somewhat over-represented, while younger people and immigrant populations are relatively under-represented, despite the fact that in estates with a large minority population surveyors were also employed from minority ethnic groups. For younger people, this discrepancy probably derives from the extent of their activities outside the home, making them more difficult to reach. The under-representation of the immigrant population is presumably related to language and cultural differences. For more detailed information on the representation of population in each case, reference is made to the reports of the researchers in the different countries which can be downloaded from the programme website. All country reports indicate that despite these over- and under-representations, the survey results are valuable for the analyses of their own individual situation.

This dataset is the result of a team effort lead by Professor Ronald van Kempen, Utrecht University with funding from the EU Fifth Framework.

It is estimated that, between the 14th and 19th centuries, fewer than 10 percent of Europe's population lived in urban areas with a population of more than 10,000 people, and fewer than 13 percent lived in urban areas with more than 5,000 people. The two given sources use different methodologies* for their estimates, which gives varying but comparable estimates for urbanization rates across Europe. Perhaps surprisingly, Bairoch estimates that the urbanization rate increased during the 14th century, a period where Europe's population fell by 25-33 percent due to the Black Death. From the 19th century onwards, urbanization in Europe rose significantly due to the rise of industrialization and increased agricultural efficiency.

Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.

Urban Atlas 2018 provides reliable, inter-comparable, high-resolution land use and land cover data with integrated population estimates for 788 Functional Urban Areas (FUA) with more than 50,000 inhabitants for the 2018 reference year in EEA38 countries (EU, EFTA, Western Balkans countries, as well as Turkey) and the United Kingdom. Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS) in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

European Population Connected to Urban Wastewater Collecting System Share by Country (Thousand Units (Persons)), 2023 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

More than half of the world's built-up urban areas with a population of 500,000 or more were located in Asia in 2023. Europe, North America, and Europe had between ** and ** percent of the urban areas with more than 500,000 inhabitants.

2007 marked the first year where more of the world's population lived in an urban setting than a rural setting. In 1960, roughly a third of the world lived in an urban setting; it is expected that this figure will reach two thirds by 2050. Urbanization is a fairly new phenomenon; for the vast majority of human history, fewer than five percent of the world lived in urban areas, due to the dependency on subsistence agriculture. Advancements in agricultural practices and technology then coincided with the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe in the late 19th century, which resulted in waves of urbanization to meet the demands of emerging manufacturing industries. This trend was replicated across the rest of the world as it industrialized over the following two centuries, and the most significant increase coincided with the industrialization of the most populous countries in Asia. In more developed economies, urbanization remains high even as economies de-industrialize, due to a variety of factors such as housing availability, labor demands in service industries, and social trends.

The European Urban Atlas provides reliable, inter-comparable, high-resolution land use and land cover change data for 785 Functional Urban Areas (FUA) with more than 50,000 inhabitants between the reference years 2012 and 2018 in EEA38 countries (EU, EFTA, Western Balkan countries as well as Türkiye) and United Kingdom. The spatial data can be downloaded together with a map for each FUA covered and a report with the metadata for the respective area. The Urban Atlas Change layers have become available as of 2012.

Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

You can read more about the product here: https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/urban-atlas/urban-atlas-change-2012-2018.

Link to this report's codebookWe are pleased to launch the 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version). This is the first report comparing the performance of capital cities and a selection of large metropolitan areas in the European-Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In total, results for 45 European cities are presented in this first prototype version. The report was prepared by a team of researchers from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Brabant Center for Sustainable Development (Telos, Tilburg University).It builds on SDSN’s experience in designing SDG indicators for nations and metropolitan areas. The report also builds on TELOS’ previous work on “Sustainability Monitoring of European Cities” (2014) prepared in collaboration with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment (Zoeteman et al. 2014) which led to the development of an interactive platform on request of the Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (Zoeteman et al. 2016)1.This report comes at a key opportunity for Europe to increase its focus on the SDGs, with the election of the new European Parliament in May, the new Presidency of the Council of the EU moving to Finland in July, and the arrival of a new European Commission by the end of the year. The European Union can and should strengthen its policy measures to achieve all of the SDGs. In that context, the European Commission’s January 2019 Reflection Paper “Towards a sustainable Europe by 2030” highlights various scenarios to support the SDGs over the next decade. The report by the European Commission highlights the opportunities to address the SDGs as part of the next EU Urban Agenda.Achieving the SDGs will require, at the local level, deep transformations in transportation, energy and urban planning and new approaches to address poverty and inequalities in access to key public services including health and education. The SDSN estimates that about two-thirds (65%) of the 169 SDG targets underlying the 17 SDGs can only be reached with the proper engagement of, and coordination with, local and regional governments (SDSN 2015).Similarly, UN-Habitat estimates that around one-third of all SDGs indicators have a local or urban component2. The Urban Agenda for the European Union launched in May 2016 (Pact of Amsterdam), recognizes the crucial role of cities in achieving the SDGs. Over two-thirds of EU citizens live in urban areas while about 85% of the EU’s GDP is generated in cities (European Commission 2019). The urban population in Europe is projected to rise to just over 80% by 2050 (European Commission 2016).This 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards for European Cities (prototype version) finds that no European capital city or large metropolitan area has of yet fully achieved the SDGs. Nordic European cities – Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen – are closest to the SDG targets but still face challenges in achieving one or several of the SDGs. Overall, the cities in Europe perform best on SDG 3 (Health and Well-Being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). By contrast, performance is lowest on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).As always, our analysis is constrained by the availability, quality and comparability of data. These data constraints are even greater at the subnational level. Despite the ground breaking work conducted by the European Commission – notably via Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre – to define territorial levels and metropolitan areas and to standardize subnational data and indicators, major gaps remain to monitor all of the SDGs. A table summarizing some of these major gaps is included in this report.The need to expand and strengthen SDG monitoring in regions and municipalities across Europe in the coming years was raised extensively in the consultation made by SDSN as part of its 2019 study on “Exposing EU policy gaps to address the Sustainable Development Goals” prepared in collaboration with the European Economic and Social Committee (Lafortune and Schmidt-Traub 2019) . This was also one of the recom- mendations made by ESAC during the consultation phase for the “2017 Sustainable development in the European Union — Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context” (European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC) 2017).We hope this first 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version) will help to identify the major SDG priorities in urban Europe. All data and analyses included in this report are available on SDSN’s and TELOS’ data portals (www.sdgindex.org and www.telos.nl). Individual city profiles are accessible online. We very much welcome comments and suggestions for filling gaps in the data used for this index and for improving the analysis and presentation of the results. Please contact us at info@sdgindex.org or telos@uvt.nl.Jeffrey Sachs,Director SDSNGeert Duijsters,Dean Tilburg School of economics, Tilburg University - Telos

The Urban Atlas provides pan-European comparable land use and land cover data for Functional Urban Areas (FUA) across EEA38 countries (EU, EFTA, Western Balkan countries as well as Türkiye) and United Kingdom. The Street Tree Layer (STL) is a separate layer from the Urban Atlas 2018 LU/LC layer produced within the level 1 urban mask for each FUA. It includes contiguous rows or a patches of trees covering 500 m² or more and with a minimum width of 10 meter over "Artificial surfaces" (nomenclature class 1) inside FUA (i.e. rows of trees along the road network outside urban areas or forest adjacent to urban areas should not be included). Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space in the frame of the EU Copernicus programme, with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency. You can read more about the product here: https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/urban-atlas/street-tree-layer-stl-2018.

European Population Connected to Urban and Other Wastewater Treatment Plants by Country, 2023 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

The development of the European Urban Atlas is part of the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment Security) project. The aim is to provide accurate data on land use and urban expansion in the 28 countries of the European Union. This mapping concerns cities above 100 000 inhabitants as defined by the Urban Audit, i.e. 305 agglomerations in the EU. This work is under way and will be completed in 2011. The data will be updated every 3 years. Already in May 2010, more than 150 cities are accessible.

European City Statistics (Urban Audit) provides reliable and comparable information on European cities, with more than 100 variables across a range of themes.

Pre-prepared Urban Atlas dataset in SHP format in the S-JTSK coordinate system archived to ZIP format. The data is made available via ATOM. Urban Atlas is part of Copernicus’s Territory Monitoring Service. It contains detailed information on the use of land in cities and their surroundings and its changes. This is a vector data in a scale of about 1: 10 000 above satellite images every 6 years; data for 2006 and 2012 are currently available, including the change layer. European cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants are mapped (since 2012, for previous years cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants). Technical specifications for each layer of HRL are available at http://land.copernicus.eu/user-corner/technical-library, general information at http://land.copernicus.eu.