The definition of cities and their limits is always a challenging task. In fact, urbanization patterns are very diverse and they rarely match administrative subdivisions. Thus, if it is often difficult to define where individual cities start and finish, it is even more so to compare cities across countries with very different history and urbanization patterns.
This manual has been produced by six organisations: the European Commission, the FAO, UN-Habitat, the ILO, the OECD and The World Bank. It develops a harmonized methodology to facilitate international statistical comparisons and to classify the entire territory of a country along an urban-rural continuum. The degree of urbanisation classification defines cities, towns and semi-dense areas, and rural areas.
