Over the past 40 years, global population has almost doubled. As a result, the size of rural areas, towns and especially cities has also grown rapidly. Today, cities are home to almost half of the global population and this share is projected to reach 55% by 2050. Global megatrends such as the climate emergency, demographic change and digitalisation will affect cities, towns and rural areas in different ways. This underlines the importance of designing efficient and coherent policy responses that are place-specific and cut across different policy domains.

Cities are home to around half of the global population. Yet, definitions of what a city or a rural area is vary widely by country. Such differences hinder robust international comparisons and prevent accurate monitoring of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as both are highly sensitive to the definitions of those areas. This report addresses this void and provides novel evidence on urbanisation throughout the world, using for the first time the definitions endorsed at the 2020 Statistical Commission of the United Nations.

This report uses two classifications of countries around the world. It makes use of the World Bank income classes that categorise economies into high-income, upper middle-income, lower middle-income, and low-income countries. Countries with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of $1,025 or less in 2018 are considered as low-income. Lower middle-income countries have a GNI per capita between $1,026 and $3,995. Upper middle-income countries have GNI per capita between $3,996 and $12,375. Finally, high-income countries have a GNI per capita of $12,376 or more. illustrates how countries are categorised according to this classification.

This chapter presents novel findings on the number of people living in cities, towns and semi-dense areas, rural areas and metropolitan areas across the world. Furthermore, it illustrates how the population shares of those areas have changed over the last 40 years and how they are projected to change until 2050. This new perspective of urbanisation is based on the application to the entire world of two new, globally consistent definitions, the degree of urbanisation and the functional urban area. These two new definitions are also presented in the chapter.

This chapter sheds light on the quality of life in cities, towns and semi-dense areas, and rural areas around the world. It examines various dimensions of how quality of life differs between cities and other areas by examining both objective outcomes as well as subjective perceptions. First, it scrutinises geographic differences in life satisfaction. Second, the chapter analyses to what extent key well-being dimensions, which shape life satisfaction and quality of life, differ across cities, towns and semi-dense areas, and rural areas. Specifically, it examines income and employment opportunities, educational attainment, health outcomes, access to services and utilities, and crime and violence.

This chapter presents evidence on the relationship between economic development and the growth of metropolitan areas. It examines how the share of people living in metropolitan areas differs by countries’ economic development, with a focus on the role of structural transformation for explaining such differences. It analyses how the proportion of people living in metropolitan areas is associated with both economic development and regional income disparities. Finally, it examines the relevance of human capital and migration in metropolitan areas as drivers of regional disparities.

This chapter provides a new perspective of major trends and recent developments in the growth of metropolitan areas (cities and their commuting zones) over the past four decades. It documents the emergence of new metropolitan areas around the world. It analyses what type of metropolitan areas appear to be growing the fastest and how many and what type of metropolitan areas are shrinking in terms of population. Finally, it assesses some of the main factors that appear to explain the growth and decline of existing metropolitan areas.

Using the new global definitions of cities and metropolitan areas, this chapter analyses the changing shape of cities around the world. It examines how densification and expansion of cities affect sustainable development. It sheds light on the extent to which metropolitan areas decentralise, i.e. grow faster in commuting zones than in the city itself. In discussing and analysing these developments, the chapter assesses their impact on urban mobility and people’s exposure to pollution, flooding, storms and sea level rise.