Abstract
The United Nations Population Division (UNPD) has been publishing and revising its World Urbanization Prospects since 1991, the latest being the 2002 revision, and this has become a popular source of data and analysis of the past, current and future proportion urban in each country, region or continent of the world. As urban issues get more attention, notably in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), it is increasingly used by other international agencies such as UNDP, World Bank, EIA, UN-Habitat as an instrument for projections of some other global trends, like poverty, energy consumption, environment and resources. Projections and even estimations, for recent years, of other global trends cannot indeed afford to do without urbanization projections, as they are often a key indicator of global integration. No other organization than the UN has been successful in compiling a database on urbanization that equals the UN database in scope and quality. An early attempt to offer alternative to the UN database is the GEOPOLIS database, which is using a common agglomeration and population criteria for all countries.
