HomeUrbanization

We have a new Urbanization topic page

July 13, 2026
Reuse our work freely

With my colleagues Hannah Ritchie and Veronika Samborska, we have made a substantial update to our topic page on urbanization. The new page brings together dozens of new charts on where and how people live. It draws on data from the European Commission and the UN, which categorizes cities, towns, and rural areas in a consistent way using satellite imagery.

On the updated page, you can explore how populations are distributed across settlement types, which cities are growing fastest, what living conditions in urban areas look like, and how urbanization relates to broader patterns of development.

You can explore the updated urbanization topic page, and if you are on a desktop computer, below, you’ll be able to see a few slides that I’ve put together to present a selection of charts and data highlights from the new page.

Our World in Data logo

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and articles 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.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.