ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the work of the United Nations (UN) in acting as the world's main source of published international comparative statistics on urbanization. It begins with an account of the types of information made available through UN publications, which reveals the prevalence of the simple urban-rural dichotomy for presenting demographic and social data. The chapter describes the standard outputs, provides a feel for the nature and range of the intelligence that they provide about urbanization and urban growth around the world. It focuses on the two main places where the UN publishes its detailed statistics on urbanization and cities: World Urbanization Prospects and Demographic Yearbook. The chapter provides a chronological look at the approach taken to each of these questions in turn, and then examines the outcome in terms of the nature of the data that the UN receives from national statistical offices and how much this has changed over the years.
