Wow. Nice catch! Thanks Stefan. I wonder how Stewart Brand’s notion of city:

http://blog.longnow.org/2005/04/11/stewart-brand-cities-and-time/

corresponds to that UN document.

I’d love to see a visualization with a population slider that you could move from, say, a thousand to a million, and see, worldwide, what qualifies as a city according to that variable definition. Also, while we’re wishing, a time slider that goes by decades for a thousand years or so.

if you really did on the UN site of what counts as a city you eventually get to this page:

“Because of significant national differences, there is no internationally agreed upon definition of urban and rural that would be applicable to all countries or even to all countries within a region.”

the linked PDF shows how this apply to the US. “Places of 2,500 or more inhabitants and urbanized areas”

so really the report released is not talking about cities they way we think about it.