ArticleScientific data2016
Spatializing 6,000 years of global urbanization from 3700 BC to AD 2000.
Article in Scientific data, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Predictions From Evolutionary Theory for Urban Environments.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Urban survival, population dynamics and historical transitions in Thessaloniki (316 BC-AD 1500).Archaeological and anthropological sciences · 2026Article
- Cliopatria - A geospatial database of world-wide political entities from 3400BCE to 2024CE.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Gridded land use data for the conterminous United States 1940-2015.Scientific data · 2022Article
- Molecular adaptations during viral epidemics.EMBO reports · 2022Review
- State of ex situ conservation of landrace groups of 25 major crops.Nature plants · 2022Article
- Urbanization favors the proliferation of Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus in urban areas of Miami-Dade County, Florida.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Dispersal patterns and population genetic structure of Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) in three different climatic regions of China.Parasites & vectors · 2021Article
- Effectiveness of adulticide and larvicide in controlling high densities of Aedes aegypti in urban environments.PloS one · 2021Article
- Fine-grained, spatiotemporal datasets measuring 200 years of land development in the United States.Earth system science data · 2021Article
- Urbanization creates diverse aquatic habitats for immature mosquitoes in urban areas.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Attention in Urban and Natural Environments.The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2019Review
- Emergence of Hierarchical Modularity in Evolving Networks Uncovered by Phylogenomic Analysis.Evolutionary bioinformatics online · 2019Review
- Article
- HISDAC-US, historical settlement data compilation for the conterminous United States over 200 years.Scientific data · 2018Article
- Construction sites in Miami-Dade County, Florida are highly favorable environments for vector mosquitoes.PloS one · 2018Article
- Can the NHS learn from the rise and fall of ancient empires?Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2017Article
- Spatializing 6,000 years of global urbanization from 3700 BC to AD 2000.Scientific data · 2016Article
- 20,000 years of societal vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in southwest Asia.WIREs. WaterReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How were cities distributed globally in the past? How many people lived in these cities? How did cities influence their local and regional environments? In order to understand the current era of urbanization, we must understand long-term historical urbanization trends and patterns. However, to date there is no comprehensive record of spatially explicit, historic, city-level population data at the global scale. Here, we developed the first spatially explicit dataset of urban settlements from 3700 BC to AD 2000, by digitizing, transcribing, and geocoding historical, archaeological, and census-based urban population data previously published in tabular form by Chandler and Modelski. The dataset creation process also required data cleaning and harmonization procedures to make the data internally consistent. Additionally, we created a reliability ranking for each geocoded location to assess the geographic uncertainty of each data point. The dataset provides the first spatially explicit archive of the location and size of urban populations over the last 6,000 years and can contribute to an improved understanding of contemporary and historical urbanization trends.
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