Population growth across OECD cities and rural areas
Most OECD countries experienced an increase in the share of the population living in cities.
Over the last 50 years, the population in OECD countries has concentrated around large and densely populated regions. The concentration of the population within a country is shaped by many factors including the distribution of economic activities within the country and the presence of public services or amenities. In 2015, almost half of the population of OECD countries (49%) lived in cities, which represented only 6% of the total OECD surface area. Of the remaining population, 26% lived in towns and semi-dense areas and 24% in rural areas.
Across OECD countries, the distribution of population across different types of settlements is highly uneven. While more than 60% of the population lived in cities in Chile, Colombia, Japan and Korea, less than 20% of the population lived in such areas in the Slovak Republic and Slovenia (Figure 3.2). On average, rural areas accounted for around one‐quarter of the population and 98.5% of the land area in OECD countries. In countries such as Ireland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia, one out of two people lived in rural regions which is double the OECD average (Figure 3.1).
Since 2000, the share of the population living in cities has increased by around 3 percentage points (pp) across the OECD, mainly at the expense of rural areas (Figure 3.3). During this period, the share of the population in towns and semi-dense areas and rural areas has decreased on average by 1.3 and 1.5 pp respectively. The relative growth of cities was particularly strong in Iceland, New Zealand and Türkiye, where their population share rose by over 7 pp.
Sources
OECD (2022), OECD Regional Statistics (database), OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/region-data-en.
Reference years and territorial level
2000-15, TL3 regions are classified according to metropolitan access classification (see below for further details).
Degree of urbanisation: This typology reflects the urban-rural continuum and proposes three classes instead of the dichotomy of urban or rural. The three classes are: i) cities (or densely populated areas); ii) towns and semi-dense areas (or intermediate density areas); and iii) rural areas (or thinly populated areas).
Access to metropolitan areas typology: The proposed classification distinguishes TL3 regions based on the level of access to metropolitan areas (Fadic et al., 2019). At a first level, regions where at least half of the regional population live in a metropolitan area of at least 250 000 inhabitants are considered “metropolitan” regions, and as “non-metropolitan” otherwise. Metropolitan regions are further distinguished as “large metro” regions if they include or are part of a metropolitan area of at least 1.5 million inhabitants. “Non-metropolitan” regions are sub-classified in regions “with access to a metro” if half of its population can reach a metropolitan area within a 60-minute drive. When half of the regional population can reach only a smaller-sized city (between 50 000 and 250 000 inhabitants), the region is classified as “with access to a small/medium city”. In all other cases, the region is classified as “remote”. The classification relies on the concept of FUAs (Dijkstra et al., 2019; OECD, 2012) to delineate metropolitan areas of at least 250 000 inhabitants or smaller-sized cities.
Further information
Territorial grids and regional typology (Annex B).
Eurostat (2013), Urban-Rural Typology, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/rural-development/methodology.
Figure notes
3.1-3.3: The OECD average corresponds to the population-weighted average of 38 OECD countries.
