Villages, towns and cities

Where do you live? Some people live in small villages. Some live in towns.

Many people live in big cities. A place where people live together is called a settlement.

Look out of your window. Do you see fields and a few houses, a main street with shops, or tall buildings and busy roads? People live in places of many sizes, and each kind has a name.

A place where people live together is called a settlement. Geographers sort settlements by size. A hamlet is a tiny group of homes. A village is bigger than a hamlet but smaller than a town. A town is bigger than a village but smaller than a city. A city is the biggest kind of settlement, with many people living close together. Villages are usually in the countryside, which geographers call rural areas. Towns and cities are urban areas.

Geographers describe settlements along a ladder of size: hamlet, village, town, city and, at the top, megacity, a city of 10 million or more people. National Geographic notes that some geographers define a village as having roughly 500 to 2,500 inhabitants and a town 2,500 to 20,000, but these are conventions, and countries draw the lines differently.

That makes international comparison hard. For its 2025 World Urbanization Prospects, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) applied, for the first time, the Degree of Urbanisation developed with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. It sorts every square kilometer of land by population density and cluster size into cities, towns and rural areas, so that a city in one country means the same thing as a city in another.

A village is small. It has just a few homes.

Many villages have a place in the middle, like a market or a green. Some villages are along a river or the sea. Many people in villages farm or fish.

A village is a small settlement, usually in the countryside. In many parts of the world, a village is built around a central point, such as a marketplace, a place of worship or an open green where people meet. Other villages stretch out in a line along a river bank, a seashore or a railroad. Fishing villages are often built this way.

In the past, many people in villages worked at farming or fishing, and many still do. Some villages are trading centers for the farms around them. In southern China, some villagers traditionally lived together in a tulou: one big, round, walled building around an open courtyard, which could house up to 800 people.

National Geographic describes three common village layouts. Nucleated villages cluster around a central point such as a marketplace, a place of worship or a public space (a village green, plaza or piazza). Linear villages follow a line, natural (a river bank or seashore, as in many fishing villages) or built (a road or railroad). Planned villages are laid out by planners, sometimes as new towns; Tapiola, Finland, was planned in the 1950s as a garden city.

Villages are often units of local government; in China and Japan, the village is an official administrative unit. Many rural villages have centered on primary activities such as farming, fishing or mining, and some have served as trading centers for centuries. Building forms vary with history and place, from the walled, circular tulou of southern China, which could house up to 800 villagers around a central courtyard, to linear villages along transport routes.

A town is bigger than a village. It has more homes and more shops.

Towns have shops, schools and other services that people from nearby villages use too.

A town is bigger than a village but smaller than a city. Some geographers say a town has between about 2,500 and 20,000 people, though countries count differently. Many towns have their own local government and offer services such as shops and schools.

Some towns grew up around one kind of work, such as a mine or a railroad. Towns are important links: the United Nations says they connect the countryside to cities, offering services and supporting local businesses. In 71 countries, including Germany, India, Uganda and the United States, towns are the most common kind of place where people live.

Under the Degree of Urbanisation, a town is a cluster of at least 5,000 inhabitants at a density of at least 300 people per square kilometer that does not qualify as a city. UN DESA's 2025 report finds that towns are the most common settlement type in 71 countries as diverse as Germany, India, Uganda and the United States, and describes their role in connecting rural areas and cities, offering essential services and supporting local economies.

National Geographic notes that towns usually have local self-government and may grow around specialized economic activities such as mining or railroading. When those activities end, towns can shrink: the western United States has ghost towns, the remains of 19th-century mining boom towns abandoned after the gold or silver ran out. Suburbs, lower-density residential areas around cities, are a related form; many grew in the United States from the late 1800s, when streetcars let workers commute into cities.

A city is very big. It has lots of people, tall buildings, busy roads and bridges.

Cities have big hospitals and universities. Some cities have millions and millions of people!

A city is a large settlement where many people live close together. Cities are full of buildings: homes, shops, offices, roads, bridges and railways. Most people in cities do jobs that are not farming, and cities usually have universities, big hospitals and government offices.

Some cities are enormous. The United Nations reported in 2025 that Jakarta, in Indonesia, is the world's most populous city, with nearly 42 million people. Dhaka, in Bangladesh, has almost 40 million, and Tokyo, in Japan, 33 million. But most cities are much smaller: 96 percent of the world's cities have fewer than 1 million people.

The Degree of Urbanisation defines a city (an urban center) as contiguous grid cells with at least 1,500 inhabitants per square kilometer and a combined population of at least 50,000; UN DESA lowered its city threshold from 300,000 to 50,000 for the 2025 revision, raising the number of cities analyzed to over 12,000. National Geographic describes urban areas as densely built, with homes, commercial buildings, roads, bridges and railways, and with most inhabitants in non-agricultural jobs.

UN DESA reports that megacities, urban areas of 10 million or more, quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025, 19 of them in Asia. Jakarta is now the most populous at nearly 42 million, followed by Dhaka at almost 40 million and Tokyo at 33 million; Cairo is the only non-Asian city in the top ten. Yet small and medium-sized cities hold more people than megacities and are growing faster: of about 12,000 cities, 96 percent have fewer than one million inhabitants and 81 percent fewer than 250,000. Some cities, including Mexico City and Chengdu, have lost population even as others grow.

In the countryside, homes are far apart. There are lots of fields, trees and animals.

In a city, homes and shops are close together. There are lots of roads, bridges and trains. Each kind of place has good things.

Life is different in different places. In rural areas, homes and businesses are far apart, and there is lots of open land. Farming is the main work in most rural areas, and people often travel a long way to reach shops, hospitals or universities. Wild animals are seen more often, because there are fewer people and buildings.

In cities, homes and businesses are packed close together, along with roads, bridges and railways. There are many kinds of jobs. Living costs, like rent and food, are usually higher in cities, and wages are usually higher too. Many people move from the countryside to cities looking for work, while some city families move out to the suburbs for more space and less noise.

National Geographic contrasts the two. Rural areas have very low population density, homes and businesses far apart, and agriculture as the primary industry in most; hamlets, villages and towns sit within them, and wildlife is more often seen. Urban areas concentrate structures, transport links and non-agricultural jobs, along with universities, hospitals and regional government, which is one reason many rural residents travel to cities.

Many people have moved from rural to urban areas, partly because farm technology reduced the need for farmworkers and partly because cities offer more economic opportunities; the cost of living, and wages, are usually higher in cities. Movement goes both ways: National Geographic notes that many city residents move to suburbs for larger homes, more open space or less traffic and noise. How people get around differs with density, from long trips between scattered rural homes to the dense road and rail networks of cities.

Long ago, most people lived in the countryside. Today, more and more people live in towns and cities.

Almost half of all the people in the world live in cities now.

The world is becoming more urban. In 1950, only 20 percent of the world's 2.5 billion people lived in cities, the United Nations says. By 2025, 45 percent of the world's 8.2 billion people did. That is more than twice the share.

The countryside is still important. In 2025, rural areas were the most common kind of place to live in 62 countries, including Austria, Finland and Romania in Europe and Chad, Mozambique and Zambia in Africa. Many villages grew into towns and cities over the last 200 years, after machines began doing work that people and animals once did.

UN DESA's World Urbanization Prospects 2025, released on 18 November 2025, estimates that cities housed 45 percent of the world's 8.2 billion people in 2025, against 20 percent of 2.5 billion in 1950, and projects that two-thirds of population growth through 2050 will be in cities, with most of the rest in towns. Rural areas remain the most common settlement type in 62 countries, down from 116 in 1975 and projected to fall to 44 by 2050; they still dominate in some European countries, such as Austria, Bulgaria, Finland and Romania, and in many in sub-Saharan Africa, the only region where rural populations are still growing significantly.

History shaped this shift. National Geographic notes that the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries vastly increased productivity, and countless villages grew into towns and cities. Because definitions matter so much, the UN now reports cities, towns and rural areas on one harmonized basis, alongside each country's own definitions.