10,000 Cities—and Counting A novel approach to quantifying the world's urban population provides insight into a changing world. February 28, 2021, 11am PST | James Brasuell | Cardaf The European Commission and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently presented "groundbreaking new mapping research" at World Urban Forum 10, concluding that there are around 10,000 cities in the world. Gregory Scruggs shares insight into the unprecedented effort to document and define the contemporary city in an article for Next City. Nailing down a definition of cities is surprisingly challenging. Nuances can neglect huge swaths of the built environment or in wildly different population estimates.