Cities and countryside

Cities, towns and countryside: how the UN counts them

The UN divides the land into 1 km² squares and looks at how many people live in each, using censuses and satellite images (the DEGURBA method, “degree of urbanisation”). This way every country is measured with the same rules.

• Cities: dense areas with at least 1,500 inhabitants per km² and at least 50,000 inhabitants in total.
• Towns and semi-dense areas: centres outside cities with at least 300 inhabitants per km² and at least 5,000 inhabitants, including suburbs and the areas around cities.
• Rural areas: villages and scattered houses, with fewer than 300 inhabitants per km², or denser areas too small to be a town.

Why the World Bank’s “urban population” is different

The “urban population” in the rankings comes from the World Bank and uses each country’s own definition: some count any municipality above a few thousand inhabitants as urban, some only regional capitals, others use different criteria. That makes countries hard to compare. With national definitions the UN counted 55% of the world’s population in urban areas in 2018; with the DEGURBA method, in 2025, 45% live in cities and 80% in cities or towns.

In the rankings, on the map and in the charts:

• Population in cities (%)
• Population in cities and towns (%)
• Urban population (%)