United Nations

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Population Division

 

World Urbanization Prospects

The 2005 Revision

 

Data in Digital Form

 

 

The 2005 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 2005. The data referring to urban and rural areas cover the period 1950-2030 and those referring to urban agglomerations cover the period 1950-2015. Detailed results from the 2005 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 1950-2005 are estimates and those for years beyond 2005 are projections. Estimates and projections are presented only for years that are multiples of five. The urban, rural and city data presented are consistent with the medium variant of the 2004 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 A and B on the following pages.

 

(1) Urban and rural areas: Nine files present estimates and projections of the population in urban and rural areas as well as associated indicators. The data are presented for 228 countries and areas individually as well as 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 2005-2030. The files present information on: (1) the total population by country; (2) the urban population by country; (3) the rural population by country; (4) the percentage of the population residing in urban areas; (5) the average annual rate of change of the total population; (6) the average annual rate of change of the urban population; (7) the average annual rate of change of the rural population; (8) the urbanization rate or average annual rate of change of the percentage urban, and (9) the average annual rate of change of the percentage rural.

 

 (2) Urban agglomerations: Seven files present the estimates and projections of the population in urban agglomerations. The first four files contain data only for urban agglomerations with 750,000 inhabitants or more in 2005. They cover the following indicators: (1) the total population of each urban agglomeration; (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. Two more files provide data for specific sets of urban agglomerations. The first presents the 30 largest urban agglomerations of the world ranked by population size over the period 1950-2015. The second presents the population of the capital cities of each country for the year 2005. Lastly, a file provides the urban population, the number of cities and the percentage of 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 (2006).  World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision.  CD-ROM Edition - Data in digital form (POP/DB/WUP/Rev.2005).