Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer undefined
Last Updated July 17, 2025, 17:06 (UTC)
Created April 23, 2025, 22:59 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_@id https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
citation Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto. 2018-05-04. Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000. Version 1.00. Palisades, NY. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). https://doi.org/10.7927/H4ZG6QBX. https://doi.org/10.7927/H4ZG6QBX.
creator Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto
graphic-preview-description Maps Download Page
graphic-preview-file https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/urbanspatial-hist-urban-pop-3700bc-ad2000/maps
harvest_object_id c567729b-d38b-4538-b224-6037bae7784f
harvest_source_id 61638e72-b36c-4866-9d28-551a3062f158
harvest_source_title DNG Legacy Data
identifier C1527281913-SEDAC
issued 2018-05-04
language {en-US}
metadata_type geospatial
modified 2018-05-04
programCode {026:001}
publisher SEDAC
references {https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.34}
release-place Palisades, NY
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash fd02e6e075cc6fda2531d36d09f07bb0f32bce583a03e82c1fcef1bfe4c36e5a
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial -180.0 -60.0 180.0 85.0
temporal 1700-01-01T00:00:00Z/2000-12-31T00:00:00Z
theme {USPAT,geospatial}