Countries by Urban population

Ranking 2024

Analysis

This metric measures the total number of people living in urban areas as reported by national statistical offices. Urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects. Aggregation of urban and rural population may not add up to total population because of different country coverages. Values are expressed as absolute counts, and a higher number indicates a larger urban population. The dataset covers 216 countries for the 2024 reference year, with 100% of data points rated official quality and all 216 countries reporting data from within the last seven years. The viability checks flagged 30 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, consistent with the enormous range between the largest and smallest countries in the dataset.

The top of the ranking is dominated by the world's most populous nations. China leads at rank 1 with 928,439,823 urban residents, followed by India at rank 2 with 513,325,082. The United States ranks 3rd at 272,513,180, Brazil 4th at 186,337,958, and Indonesia 5th at 166,551,891. Nigeria ranks 6th at 146,531,222, Japan 7th at 114,293,108, and Russia 8th at 107,811,022. These high absolute values reflect large total populations combined with substantial urbanization. Mexico ranks 9th at 104,366,731 and Pakistan ranks 10th at 98,430,767, rounding out the top ten.

Notable patterns emerge in the middle ranks. Nepal ranks 43rd with 19,798,704 urban residents, placing it ahead of the Netherlands at rank 50 with 17,208,906, illustrating how population size rather than development level determines position in this absolute metric. Singapore ranks 91st at 6,036,860 despite being entirely urban, because its total population is small. Hong Kong SAR, China ranks 80th at 7,524,100. Korea, Dem. People's Rep. ranks 51st at 16,921,877, placing above Switzerland at rank 78 with 7,696,309. At the lower end, Tuvalu ranks 215th at 6,243 urban residents and Liechtenstein ranks 216th at 5,929, the lowest value in the dataset.

This metric has several important limitations. Because urban definitions vary by country, the comparability of values across nations is constrained by differing national classification standards. Countries that define urban areas more broadly will record higher urban populations than equally developed countries using narrower definitions. The source note explicitly states that aggregation of urban and rural population may not add up to total population due to different country coverages. The 30 extreme outliers flagged in the viability checks are a direct consequence of the massive disparity in country sizes rather than data errors. Rankings therefore reflect the combined effect of total population size and urbanization ratio, making it difficult to use this indicator alone to assess urbanization levels.

Methodology

Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SP.URB.TOTL, reference year 2024. The metric is defined as follows: urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects. Aggregation of urban and rural population may not add up to total population because of different country coverages. Values are expressed as absolute counts of urban residents. The dataset covers 216 countries, all with data from the last seven years (100% recency), and 100% of data points are classified as official quality. The viability checks identified 30 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, driven by the dataset's range from 5,929 (Liechtenstein) to 928,439,823 (China), a spread of over 15,659,198%. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 2.0%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. No microstates under 1 million population were excluded from this dataset.

Sources

• World Bank