Minimum number of inhabitants for a settlement to qualify as an urban area
What you should know about this indicator
- There is no consistent definition of what constitutes an 'urban area'. This is highly variable across countries. This data presents a given country's minimum threshold of inhabitants needed for it to be defined an 'urban area'. For many countries, there is no defined threshold based on inhabitants; other metrics such as population density, infrastructure, or even pre-defined cities may be used.
- Note that some countries with minimum inhabitant thresholds noted here also include additional qualities (such as population density) to be met.
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Reuse this work
- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
- All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.
Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Minimum number of inhabitants for a settlement to qualify as an urban area”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser (2024) - “Urbanization”. Data adapted from United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-threshold-for-urban-area [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Minimum number of inhabitants for a settlement to qualify as an urban area” [dataset]. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Urbanization Prospects Dataset” [original data]. Retrieved November 21, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-threshold-for-urban-area