Across space (cont.)
Basic Measures (cont.)
It is can be seen that it is not a trivial task to try to make consistent statistical definitions of the urban population. As a result, international organizations like United Nations often use the size of the population to compare countries or regions. The map displayed below gives information on both the percentage of the entire population residing in urban areas and the size of the population within the major urban areas of the country.
Percentage of urban population and major urban areas by size
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division: World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision. New York 2012
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Maps/maps_urban_2011.htm 
Notice how many of the countries with a high percentage (over 75%) of the population living in urban areas also have cities with 10 million or more inhabitants. However there are some countries with high percentages in urban areas but only small numbers (1-5 million) of inhabitants in the major urban areas. Australia is a good example of this.
What does this suggest to you? Make some notes in the box below.
High percentages living in urban areas of a small absolute number of people may suggest that the population of these areas is concentrated in the urban areas, with few people living in rural areas. This can have important consequences for the interpretation of measures of population density. This is discussed further in the following pages.