According to Our World in Data, more than half of the entire world’s population, 4 billion people, now live in urban areas.
However, living in highly dense cities and urban settings is a relatively new phenomenon in human history and has changed how societies live, work, travel, and build networks.
Previously, throughout most of human history, most human beings lived in small communities.
“Over the past few centuries – and particularly in recent decades – this has shifted dramatically. There has been a mass migration of populations from rural to urban areas,” Our World in Data explains.
More than 80% of the population lives in urban areas in higher-income countries across Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the Middle East.
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Meanwhile, between 50% to 80% of people live in urban settings in upper-middle-income countries across Eastern Europe, East Asia, North and Southern Africa, and South America.
To compare, in 1800, less than a tenth of all people across all regions lived in urban areas.
Urbanization trends are expected to continue, as incomes rise and more employment shifts away from agriculture.
As reported by Statista, Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan was the largest world urban agglomeration in 2025. That year, a mind-melting number of people lived in the area: 37 million.
In second place was Delhi, India, with more than 34.7 million inhabitants, followed by Shanghai, China (30.5 million), Dhaka, Bangladesh (24.7 million), Cairo, Egypt (23.1 million), and Sao Paolo, Brazil (23 million).
Vehicle emissions, industrial processes, agricultural practices, burning fossil fuels for energy, improper waste disposal, and wildfires all cause pollution.
Based on the data in the 2025 IQAir World Air Quality Report, air pollution has long been recognized as a persistent hazard, increasing the risk of non-communicable diseases like cardiac disease, stroke, and cancer. Last year was a turning point, as “international institutions finally elevated the crisis to the forefront of the global agenda.”
According to the report, air quality is a “fragile asset,” not a “static achievement,” requiring “active stewardship and a proactive strategy.”
“Maintaining clean air is a long-term commitment to incremental improvement rather than a single policy goal achieved or annual target concentration reached. For children, however, the impact of air pollution exposure can last a lifetime; the respiratory damage sustained during developmental years is often irreversible. As the demographic with the least agency in these environmental shifts, children are left to bear the permanent health costs of air quality they did not choose,” the report states.
