Abstract

Many of the Sustainable Development Goal indicators should be measured in cities, urban and rural areas. However, the lack of a global harmonised definition of cities, urban and rural areas limited the comparability of these indicators. To resolve this problem, six international organisations developed a global definition, called the Degree of Urbanisation, which was endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission in 2020. In contrast to the traditional urban-rural dichotomy, this definition captures the urban-rural continuum in three classes at level one and seven at level two.
This presentation will explain why this definition matters for SDGs. It will present a range of indicators by Degree of Urbanisation based on a variety of sources (census, surveys, geospatial data…) and show how sensitive these indicators are to where the boundary between urban and rural is drawn. Next it will describe the free data, tools and online training provided by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre to help countries implement this definition. This includes a time series of built-up area grids, estimated population grids and a classification of that grid by Degree of Urbanisation. The free tools, which can be used on or offline and don’t require any license software, cover every step of the process: creating a population grid, classifying the population grid and classifying the small spatial units. It also generates a comparison with the national urban-rural definition, if available. The online training is free and provides step-by-step guidance on how to implement this definition using the free tools.
The presentation will provide an overview of the feedback received from countries that have already implemented this new definition. It will conclude with a focus on the next steps, including a report to the UN Statistical Commission on the implementation of this definition in 2025 and the revision of the UN Census Recommendations.