Dataset · UN DESA Population Division
Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation)
76 years, 1950–2025 · 222 countries · 3 measures
The share of a country's people living in cities, measured the same way everywhere: a city is a dense, continuous cluster of at least 50,000 people, found on population grids built from census and satellite data rather than on administrative maps. It is the UN's comparable answer to how urban a country is, which national definitions cannot give.
This site holds every year from 1950 to 2025, read from UN DESA Population Division’s own data and stored exactly as published.
Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation) · the file
- Newest
- Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation), 2025
- Held
- 76 years · 16,872 rows
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
0176 years
Every year
Every year comes from UN DESA Population Division’s 2025 release, recalculated on one method. Each opens the full table for that year; each downloads as a CSV.
Show all 76 years
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: population-in-cities-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
02Before you compare
Using the series
New to World Urbanization Prospects after 2018
The Degree of Urbanisation first appeared in World Urbanization Prospects in the revision that followed 2018. That revision, and the one in 2014, reported urban shares on each country’s own definition, which differ between countries and sometimes within one country over time, so their figures cannot be joined to this series. The Division still publishes national-definition shares, in tables of their own, and states that the new revision supersedes every earlier UN estimate of urbanisation.
Three periods built three different ways
From 1975 to 2020 the figures come from grids that spread census counts across satellite maps of buildings, with a grid for every fifth year; the years between are not observed on their own. Before 1975 a statistical model works backwards, leaning on countries’ own urban statistics and older city series. After 2020 they depend on the CRISP projection model, although the Division counts every year to 2025 as an estimate. The Division warns that grids before the 1990s, and grids built from large census areas, are less certain.
Cut at borders, scaled to national totals
A settlement that spreads across a frontier is split at the border, and each side must reach the size threshold on its own; a handful of small territories, such as Monaco and Gibraltar, are exceptions. Each country’s grid is also scaled so that its total matches the World Population Prospects revision used when these figures were made. Multiplying a share by that revision’s population gives a number of people; another revision’s population will not match exactly.
035 columns
What’s in the file
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2025 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 222 | 0 | |
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 222 | 0 | |
Population living in cities, Degree of Urbanisation (%)population_in_citiesHeadline | The headline figure: Share of the population living in cities as the Degree of Urbanisation defines them (%). | Number · up to 3 decimals | 0.00036 share it100.0003 share itmiddle 36.651 | 185 | 0 | |
Population in towns and semi-dense areas (%)towns_semi_denseMeasure | Share of the population living in towns and semi-dense areas: urban clusters outside cities with at least 300 people per km² and 5,000 people in all. | Number · up to 3 decimals | 0.0007 share it98.504 Bermudamiddle 30.834 | 216 | 0 | |
Population in rural areas (%)rural_areasMeasure | Share of the population living in rural areas, the thinly populated land outside cities, towns and semi-dense areas. The three shares add up to 100. | Number · up to 3 decimals | 0.0003 share it100.0004 share itmiddle 24.967 | 214 | 0 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. Neither end is better. The values describe a shape, not a score.
04222 countries across every year
Who is covered
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 | 54 |
| Americas | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
| Asia | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 |
| Europe | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
| Oceania | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 |
| All | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 | 222 |
The newest 12 of 76 years.
The same 222 countries in every year.
Not in this dataset · 3 places this site covers
UN DESA Population Division gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
05Provenance
Where it comes from
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
UN DESA Population Division
2 · Their file
World Urbanization Prospects 2025: population living in cities (Degree of Urbanisation), % of total, 2025
3 · Read by this site
September 29, 2026
Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.4 · Stored as
76 files, one per year
Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as population-in-cities-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored to 3 decimals, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
From World Urbanization Prospects 2025, read from the UN Population Division's own workbook of population shares by Degree of Urbanisation, which applies the European Commission's harmonised definition to its Global Human Settlement Layer grids. The workbook continues to 2050; those later years are projections and are excluded.
06Reuse
Licence and credit
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 29, 2026
- Share and redistribute it
- Adapt it and build on it
- Use it commercially
- Credit the publisher
- Say what you changed
The version of CC BY written for intergovernmental organisations. Credit the publisher and say what you changed.
A credit line
Source: UN DESA Population Division, Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation), via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
UN DESA Population Division. Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation), 1950–2025 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/population-in-cities
The publisher’s own citation: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2025). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2025 Revision, Online Edition.
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.