Degree of Urbanisation

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A grid-based method for classifying settlements, developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre with UN partners and endorsed for international statistical comparison. Population is allocated to one-square-kilometre cells; contiguous clusters above defined density and total-population thresholds become cities, lower clusters become towns and semi-dense areas, and the remainder is rural. Its point is that a country's own definition of "urban" is a legal artefact — some states set the threshold at 2,000 inhabitants, some at 50,000, some by administrative status alone — so a global urban share assembled from national definitions is an aggregate of incomparable things. World Urbanization Prospects 2025 integrated the method for the first time and lowered the minimum population for a named city from 300,000 to 50,000, bringing more than 12,000 cities into the analysis. The consequence is uncomfortable and instructive: measurement choices moved Jakarta from 33rd to first in the ranking of the world's largest cities without a single person moving house.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.