   thumb|urban areas with at least one million inhabitants in 2006. by the end of the twentieth century, 47% of the world's population lived in cities, a figure which has risen from 3% since 1800. thumb|world map showing percent of population living in an urban environment. an urban area is a location characterized by high human population density and vast human-built features in comparison to the areas surrounding it. urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets. the world's urban population in 1950 of just 746 million has soared in the decades since. in 2009, the number of people living in urban areas (3.42 billion) surpassed the number living in rural areas (3.41 billion) and since then the world has become more urban than rural.http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/urbanization/urban-rural.shtml this was the first time that the majority of the world's population lived in a city.http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/en/ in 2014 there were 7.25 billion people living on the planet, of which the global urban population comprised 3.9 billion. the population division of the united nations department of economic and social affairs at that time predicted the urban population would grow to 6.4 billion by 2050, with 37% of that growth to come from three countries: china, india and nigeria. urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization. measuring the extent of an urban area helps in analyzing population density and urban sprawl, and in determining urban and rural populations. unlike an urban area, a metropolitan area includes not only the urban area, but also satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socio-economically connected to the urban core city, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market. ==definitions== definitions vary somewhat between nations. europe
Urban_areas Urban_design Urban_studies_and_planning