Statistics on Degree of Urbanisation. 2022
In Catalonia, 76.7% of the territory are rural areas inhabited by 8.9% of the population, while 3.7% of the territory are densely populated as the majority of the population (61.6%) lives there. The remaining area of Catalonia (19.6%) is home to 29.5% of the population and is defined as a semi-dense area.
The Statistics on Degree of Urbanisation divide the territory of Catalonia into a grid of 1 km2 cells in accordance with the standard European grid and classifies them by degree of urbanisation based on population size, density and contiguity criteria.
Furthermore, for each of the territorial units of the municipalities, census tract groups and census tracts, these statistics present the percentages of population residing in grids classified as urban centres, urban clusters and rural cells and, consequently, the degree of urbanisation.
By degree of urbanisation, of the 947 municipalities in Catalonia, 687 are classified as rural areas, 212 municipalities as towns or intermediate density areas, and 48 municipalities are classified as urban centres.
Out of the 687 municipalities classified as rural or thinly populated areas, in 657 of them (95.6%) the entire population lives in rural cells.
In 2 out of 3 of the municipalities classified as semi-dense towns and areas, more than 90% of the population lives in moderate density cells. There are 9 municipalities classified as semi-dense towns because although they have a high percentage of urban cells, they do not have more than 10,000 inhabitants.
Of the municipalities classified as urban centres or densely populated areas, there are 9 municipalities where 100% of the population lives in this type of cell (urban centre), 32 municipalities where the percentage of the population living in the urban centre is between 90% and 99.9%, and in the remaining 7 the range is between 88.3% and 62.1%.
65% of the Catalan population lives in cells with a population density greater than 5,000 inhabitants/km2, which is 1% of the total number of cells. The 3 km2 with the highest population density in Catalonia (more than 50,000 inhabitants/km2) are in the county of El Barcelonès (two in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and one in Santa Coloma de Gramenet).
As a new feature, the Statistics on Degree of Urbanisation present the distribution of the population density of Catalonia on the 1 km2 grid for the entire series from 2018 to 2022, furthermore the series of the degree of Urbanisation from 2018 to 2021 has also been revised.