Historically, city dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for global sustainability. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. In a more narrow sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no fixed definition of the lower boundary for their size. The term 'city' has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Number of people living in urban and rural areas from 1960 to 2021Ī city is a human settlement of a notable size.
For other uses, see City (disambiguation).
