Urban Spatial Data

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Historical Urban Population, v1 (3700 – 2000)

Purpose:
To provide spatially explicit, historic, city-level population data from 3700 BC to AD 2000 for improved understanding of contemporary and historical urbanization trends.
Abstract:
The Historical Urban Population, 3700 BC - AD 2000, originally developed by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, is the first spatially explicit global data set containing location and size of urban populations over the last 6,000 years. The data set was created by digitizing, transcribing, and geocoding historical, archaeological, and census-based urban population data. Each data point consists of a city name, latitude, longitude, year, population, and a reliability ranking to assess the geographic uncertainty of each data point. Despite spatial and temporal gaps, no other geocoded data set at this resolution exists. It can therefore be used to investigate long-term historical urbanization trends and patterns, evaluate the current era of urbanization, and build a richer record of urban population through history.
Recommended Citation(s)*:

Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto. 2018. Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000. Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). https://doi.org/10.7927/H4ZG6QBX. Accessed DAY MONTH YEAR.

ENW (EndNote & RefWorks)†
RIS (Others)

Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto. 2016. Spatializing 6,000 Years of Global Urbanization from 3700 BC to AD 2000. Scientific Data 3: 160034. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.34.

ENW (EndNote & RefWorks)†
RIS (Others)

* When authors make use of data they should cite both the data set and the scientific publication, if available. Such a practice gives credit to data set producers and advances principles of transparency and reproducibility. Please visit the data citations page for details. Users who would like to choose to format the citation(s) for this dataset using a myriad of alternate styles can copy the DOI number and paste it into Crosscite's website.

† For EndNote users, please check the Research Note field for issues with importing authors that are organizations when using the ENW file format.

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