United Nations, DESA - Population Division

Population Estimates and Projections Section

World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision

CD-ROM Edition - Data in digital form
February 2008

 

Documentation

The 2007 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, prepared by the United Nations Population Division, provides a comprehensive and consistent set of urban and rural population data for the world's countries and areas, as well as for urban agglomerations with more than 750,000 inhabitants in 2007. The data referring to urban and rural areas cover the period 1950-2050 and those referring to urban agglomerations cover the period 1950-2025. Detailed results from the 2007 Revision are available for purchase in two sets of files, distributed on a single CD-ROM.

The files are prepared in Excel 2003, which is compatible with all versions since Excel 5.0/95. The CD-ROM version launches a navigation interface upon insertion that provides direct access to the files.

In the data sets, figures for 1950-2007 are estimates and those for years beyond 2007 are projections. To the exception of a selected set of annual indicators, estimates and projections are presented for years that are multiples of five. The urban, rural and city data presented are consistent with the medium variant of the 2006 Revision of World Population Prospects, the official United Nations population estimates and projections at the national level. A short description of each set of files is presented below; the list of file names and their contents are presented in detail in tables for Data Set 1: Urban and Rural Areas and Data Set 2: Urban Agglomerations.

  1. (1) Urban and rural areas: Ten files present estimates and projections of the population in urban and rural areas as well as associated indicators. The data are presented for 229 countries and areas individually and for 33 country aggregates, including the world as a whole, the more and the less developed regions, the major world areas and selected additional aggregates. The projected values cover the period 2007-2050. The files present information on: (1) urban and rural population and percentage urban in 2007; (2) the percentage of the population residing in urban areas; (3) the urban population by country; (4) the rural population by country; (5) the total population by country; (6) the average annual rate of change of the urban population; (7) the average annual rate of change of the rural population; (8) the average annual rate of change of the total population; (9) the urbanization rate or average annual rate of change of the percentage urban, and (10) the average annual rate of change of the percentage rural. In addition to these data presented for five-year periods, annual time series are provided for the following five indicators: (10) the total population by country; (11) the urban population by country; (12) the rural population by country; (13) the percentage of the population residing in urban areas.

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  3. (2) Urban agglomerations: Eleven files present the estimates and projections of the population in urban agglomerations. The main set of files contains data only for urban agglomerations with 750,000 inhabitants or more in 2007. They cover the following indicators: (1) the total population of each urban agglomeration (also included as annual time series); (2) the average annual rate of change of the population of each urban agglomeration; (3) the percentage of the urban population residing in each urban agglomeration; (4) the percentage of the total population residing in each urban agglomeration. Three more files provide data for specific sets of urban agglomerations. The first one presents the 30 largest urban agglomerations of the world ranked by population size over the period 1950-2025. The second provides 1950-2025 time series of the population of the 30 largest urban agglomerations in 2007. The third presents the population of the capital cities of each country for the year 2007. Lastly, four files (one per indicator and altogether) provide summary statistics for major areas, regions and countries (with a population of less than 100,000 in 2007) on the number of cities, the percentage of urban population and the urban population by size class of urban settlement.

 

The following citation should be used to indicate the source of any data derived from the data sets described above:
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2008). World urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision. CD-ROM Edition - Data in digital form (United Nations, POP/DB/WUP/Rev.2007).

 
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