OBSERVER: Seven things we learned from the UN World Urbanization Prospects
OBSERVER: Seven things we learned from the UN World Urbanization Prospects
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Wed, 03/12/2025 – 10:01
Urbanisation is reshaping the world at a pace which has surpassed earlier expectations, altering how people live and how societies plan for housing, transport, and essential services. A new analysis from the UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025, drawing on harmonised global settlement data from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service’s Global Human Settlement Layer datasets, reveals a series of shifts challenging long-standing assumptions. Tokyo is no longer the world’s largest city, the proportion of urban dwellers has been greatly underestimated, and five more unexpected findings reshape our understanding of where people live today. In this Observer, we explore seven key insights from the report and what they mean for the planet’s urban future.
Around the world, urbanisation is changing how and where people live, work and build communities. The United Nation’s World Urbanization Prospects 2025 (WUP25) report, published in November 2025, reveals that the majority of the world’s population now live in urban areas, with 45% living in cities and 36% in towns. The situation in 1950 was radically different, when just 20% of the world’s population lived in cities and 40% in towns.
The share of the population living in cities has more than doubled since 1950, with around 3.69 billion people, or 45% of the world’s population, now living in cities. The WUP25 projects that two-thirds of the world’s population growth between now and 2050 will take place in cities.
An eye on the world’s population
Published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 report presents the UN’s estimates and projections of urbanisation for 237 countries and areas, covering over 12,000 cities with at least 50,000 inhabitants. The report’s estimates are based on data provided by the Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), which is the exposure component of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS).
GHSL combines satellite imagery with national census data to develop population density grids. These grids are then used to map settlement types, classifying the world’s settlements as cities, towns, or rural areas. The team behind GHSL was able to create population, built-up area, and settlement projections up to 2100 (the full data set extends from 1950 to 2100) to understand future settlement growth.
Redefining what is considered a city
The definition of what constitutes an urban area can vary tremendously from one country to the next, and often towns and semi-dense areas are classified as rural areas, leading to an undercount of urban dwellers.
A key innovation of the WUP25 is the full integration of the new harmonised Degree of Urbanisation methodology, which allows cities, towns, and rural areas to be measured consistently across countries and over time, while still providing results based on national definitions for domestic policy use and statistical continuity.
The JRC also developed projections of future urbanisation patterns based on the Degree of Urbanisation methodology, modelling the areas which are most likely to attract new residents based on historical trends and distance to other settlements, roads, utilities, and other characteristics.
Using this methodology, the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 highlights seven notable findings.
1. The number of megacities continues to grow, and Tokyo is no longer the biggest
The number of cities with 10 million inhabitants or more has quadrupled, from just eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025. More than half of these new megacities are in Asia. Under the Degree of Urbanisation methodology, Jakarta’s population is calculated as nearly 42 million, making it the world’s most populous city.
Aside from Cairo, all 10 of the world’s largest cities are in Asia, yet today’s leaderboard will likely soon change, as fast-growing Dhaka is expected to become the world’s largest city by mid-century, with Tokyo dropping to seventh place. The world will also likely see seven new megacities by 2050, including Kuala Lumpur or Addis Ababa.
2. Most people still live in small- and medium-sized cities
While megacities may have the momentum, most people still live in small- and medium-sized cities. According to WUP25, the total number of cities on the planet more than doubled between 1975 and 2025, reaching 12,000 today, and could grow to more than 15,000 by 2050.
Most of these cities will have a population between 50,000 and 250,000. Small- and medium-sized cities are also some of the fastest growing urban areas in the world, particularly in Africa and Asia. Of the 427 cities which grew faster than 4% in the last decade, one-third were in sub-Saharan Africa, and another one-quarter were in central and southern Asia.
3. Future population growth will be concentrated in just seven countries
Collectively, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia are expected to add more than 500 million city residents between 2025 and 2050. This accounts for over half of the projected 982 million new city dwellers the world will add over that period.
4. City population growth is uneven
Although most cities are growing, around 3,000 saw their populations decrease between 2015 and 2025. Most of these shrinking cities have fewer than 250,000 inhabitants. One-third of these shrinking cities are in China, and one-fifth in India, showing how growth and decline can happen simultaneously within the same country. Megacity status also does not guarantee growth: very large cities like Mexico City and Chengdu are seeing decreases in their populations.
5. Towns and smaller urbanisations matter too
While the global trend is towards city life, towns remain the most common type of settlement in 71 countries, including in Germany, India, Uganda, and the United States of America. Globally, 2.9 billion people live in towns and semi-dense areas, 40% or 1.2 billion of these live in India and China.
Although many regions have seen their town populations either level off or start to decline as people migrate to cities, towns in sub-Sharan Africa and central and southern Asia are expected to go against this trend and see robust growth over the next 25 years.
6. The changing geography of rural areas
From Croatia to France, Mozambique to Zambia, rural areas continue to host sizable populations.
In countries such as Bhutan, Eswatini, Laos, and Zimbabwe, more than half the population calls a rural area home. But while rural populations are growing in sub-Saharan Africa, the opposite is happening in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, where the total number of rural dwellers has been declining since 2015. This reflects a general trend: in 1975, rural areas represented the most common settlement type in 116 countries. Today, that number is just 62.
7. Urbanisation is growing faster than population
Between 1975 and 2025, the amount of built-up land occupied by humans grew almost twice as fast as the global population. As a result, the average amount of built-up land used per person surged from 44 to 63 square metres.
The imbalance is particularly pronounced in rural areas, which, when it comes to average built-up land use per person, tend to be less efficient than their more urban counterparts. Despite slow or even negative population growth, the land dedicated to rural settlements has doubled since 1975.
While this trend is observable worldwide, the populations of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand tend to use more built-up land per person. Latin America and the Caribbean have the second highest use of built-up land per person, while central and southern Asia have the lowest.
Urban and population data to support sustainable development
Promoting sustainable development requires integrated planning which treats cities, towns, and rural areas as a single, interconnected, and interdependent system. The key to achieving such planning lies in consistent, comparable, and coherent data.
The data provided by the GHSL and the projects using it support evidence-based policymaking, planning, and monitoring. They can also help governments, international organisations, and researchers better understand urban settlement patterns, anticipate future demands, support aid delivery in emergencies, and design targeted interventions which foster inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable urban development for the years to come.
This makes the World Urbanization Prospects a critically important resource for fostering progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda.
Thu, 04/12/2025 – 12:00
