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.

Many Rust-Belt cities have seen almost half their populations move from inside the city borders to the surrounding suburbs and elsewhere since the 1970s. As populations shifted, neighborhoods changed—in their average income, educational profile, and housing prices. But the shift did not happen in every neighborhood at the same rate. Recent research has uncovered some of the patterns characterizing the process.

A dataset listing Illinois cities by population for 2024.

In 2025, the Ile-de-France region, sometimes called the Paris region, was the most populous in France. It is located in the northern part of France, divided into eight departments and crossed by the Seine River. The region contains Paris, its large suburbs, and several rural areas. The total population in metropolitan France was estimated at around ** million inhabitants. In the DOM (Overseas Department), France had more than *** million citizens spread over the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion, Mayotte, and the South American territory of French Guiana. Ile-de-France: the most populous region in France According to the source, more than ** million French citizens lived in the Ile-de-France region. Ile-de-France was followed by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Occitanie region which is in the Southern part of the country. Ile-de-France is not only the most populated region in France, it is also the French region with the highest population density. In 2020, there were ******* residents per square kilometer in Ile-de-France compared to ***** for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the second most populated region in France. More than two million people were living in the city of Paris in 2025. Thus, the metropolitan area outside the city of Paris, called the suburbs or banlieue in French, had more than ten million inhabitants. Ile-de-France concentrates the majority of the country’s economic and political activities. An urban population In 2024, the total population of France amounted to over 68 million. The population in the country has increased since the mid-2000s. As well as the other European countries, France is experiencing urbanization. In 2023, more than ** percent of the French population lived in cities. This phenomenon shapes France’s geography.

ps-places-metadata-v1.01

SUMMARY

This dataset comprises a pair of layers, (points and polys) which attempt to better locate "populated places" in NZ. Populated places are defined here as settled areas, either urban or rural where densitys of around 20 persons per hectare exist, and something is able to be seen from the air.

RATIONALE

The only liberally licensed placename dataset is currently LINZ geographic placenames, which has the following drawbacks: - coordinates are not place centers but left most label on 260 series map - the attributes are outdated

METHODOLOGY

This dataset necessarily involves cleaving the linz placenames set into two, those places that are poplulated, and those unpopulated. Work was carried out in four steps. First placenames were shortlisted according to the following criterion: - all places that rated at least POPL in the linz geographic places layer, ie POPL, METR or TOWN or USAT were adopted. - Then many additional points were added from a statnz meshblock density analysis.
- Finally remaining points were added from a check against linz residential polys, and zenbu poi clusters.

Spelling is broadly as per linz placenames, but there are differences for no particular reason. Instances of LINZ all upper case have been converted to sentance case. Some places not presently in the linz dataset are included in this set, usually new places, or those otherwise unnamed. They appear with no linz id, and are not authoritative, in some cases just wild guesses.

Density was derived from the 06 meshblock boundarys (level 2, geometry fixed), multipart conversion, merging in 06 usually resident MB population then using the formula pop/area*10000. An initial urban/rural threshold level of 0.6 persons per hectare was used.

Step two was to trace the approx extent of each populated place. The main purpose of this step was to determine the relative area of each place, and to create an intersection with meshblocks for population. Step 3 involved determining the political center of each place, broadly defined as the commercial center.

Tracing was carried out at 1:9000 for small places, and 1:18000 for large places using either bing or google satellite views. No attempt was made to relate to actual town 'boundarys'. For example large parks or raceways on the urban fringe were not generally included. Outlying industrial areas were included somewhat erratically depending on their connection to urban areas.

Step 3 involved determining the centers of each place. Points were overlaid over the following layers by way of a base reference:

a. original linz placenames b. OSM nz-locations points layer c. zenbu pois, latest set as of 5/4/11 d. zenbu AllSuburbsRegions dataset (a heavily hand modified) LINZ BDE extract derived dataset courtesy Zenbu. e. LINZ road-centerlines, sealed and highway f. LINZ residential areas, g. LINZ building-locations and building footprints h. Olivier and Co nz-urban-north and south

Therefore in practice, sources c and e, form the effective basis of the point coordinates in this dataset. Be aware that e, f and g are referenced to the LINZ topo data, while c and d are likely referenced to whatever roading dataset google possesses. As such minor discrepencys may occur when moving from one to the other.

Regardless of the above, this place centers dataset was created using the following criteria, in order of priority:

• attempts to represent the present (2011) subjective 'center' of each place as defined by its commercial/retail center ie. mainstreets where they exist, any kind of central retail cluster, even a single shop in very small places.
• the coordinate is almost always at the junction of two or more roads.
• most of the time the coordinate is at or near the centroid of the poi cluster
• failing any significant retail presence, the coordinate tends to be placed near the main road junction to the community.
• when the above criteria fail to yield a definitive answer, the final criteria involves the centroids of: . the urban polygons . the clusters of building footprints/locations.

To be clear the coordinates are manually produced by eye without any kind of computation. As such the points are placed approximately perhaps plus or minus 10m, but given that the roads layers are not that flash, no attempt was made to actually snap the coordinates to the road junctions themselves.

The final step involved merging in population from SNZ meshblocks (merge+sum by location) of popl polys). Be aware that due to the inconsistent way that meshblocks are defined this will result in inaccurate populations, particular small places will collect population from their surrounding area. In any case the population will generally always overestimate by including meshblocks that just nicked the place poly. Also there are a couple of dozen cases of overlapping meshblocks between two place polys and these will double count. Which i have so far made no attempt to fix.

Merged in also tla and regions from SNZ shapes, a few of the original linz atrributes, and lastly grading the size of urban areas according to SNZ 'urban areas" criteria. Ie: class codes:

1. Not used.
2. main urban area 30K+
3. secondary urban area 10k-30K
4. minor urban area 1k-10k
5. rural center 300-1K
6. village -300

Note that while this terminology is shared with SNZ the actual places differ owing to different decisions being made about where one area ends an another starts, and what constiutes a suburb or satellite. I expect some discussion around this issue. For example i have included tinwald and washdyke as part of ashburton and timaru, but not richmond or waikawa as part of nelson and picton. Im open to discussion on these.

No attempt has or will likely ever be made to locate the entire LOC and SBRB data subsets. We will just have to wait for NZFS to release what is thought to be an authoritative set.

PROJECTION

Shapefiles are all nztm. Orig data from SNZ and LINZ was all sourced in nztm, via koordinates, or SNZ. Satellite tracings were in spherical mercator/wgs84 and converted to nztm by Qgis. Zenbu POIS were also similarly converted.

ATTRIBUTES

Shapefile: Points id : integer unique to dataset name : name of popl place, string class : urban area size as above. integer tcode : SNZ tla code, integer rcode : SNZ region code, 1-16, integer area : area of poly place features, integer in square meters. pop : 2006 usually resident popluation, being the sum of meshblocks that intersect the place poly features. Integer lid : linz geog places id desc_code : linz geog places place type code

Shapefile: Polygons gid : integer unique to dataset, shared by points and polys name : name of popl place, string, where spelling conflicts occur points wins area : place poly area, m2 Integer

LICENSE

Clarification about the minorly derived nature of LINZ and google data needs to be sought. But pending these copyright complications, the actual points data is essentially an original work, released as public domain. I retain no copyright, nor any responsibility for data accuracy, either as is, or regardless of any changes that are subsequently made to it.

Peter Scott 16/6/2011

v1.01 minor spelling and grammar edits 17/6/11

In 2023, the metropolitan area of New York-Newark-Jersey City had the biggest population in the United States. Based on annual estimates from the census, the metropolitan area had around 19.5 million inhabitants, which was a slight decrease from the previous year. The Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas rounded out the top three. What is a metropolitan statistical area? In general, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a core urbanized area with a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants – the smallest MSA is Carson City, with an estimated population of nearly 56,000. The urban area is made bigger by adjacent communities that are socially and economically linked to the center. MSAs are particularly helpful in tracking demographic change over time in large communities and allow officials to see where the largest pockets of inhabitants are in the country. How many MSAs are in the United States? There were 421 metropolitan statistical areas across the U.S. as of July 2021. The largest city in each MSA is designated the principal city and will be the first name in the title. An additional two cities can be added to the title, and these will be listed in population order based on the most recent census. So, in the example of New York-Newark-Jersey City, New York has the highest population, while Jersey City has the lowest. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts an official population count every ten years, and the new count is expected to be announced by the end of 2030.