DDL Urban Data Center Documentation

The goal of the DDL Urban Data Center is to build a robust and ever-growing universe of datasets for urban agglomerations around the world, at different grains.

The platform is produced by Development Data Lab (DDL).

Where to start

Read the Urban Boundaries 2026 article first — it defines the problem we are trying to solve and our approach to it. The full technical methodology paper is forthcoming.

Concepts — Understand the Urban Agglomeration model: how boundaries are defined, what administrative splits are, and how dataset grains work.

Datasets — Browse the full dataset catalog. Each dataset page documents the schema, grain, column definitions, and methodology summary.

Releases — Versioned changelog of all published dataset packages.

Use the Explorer to browse city-level data interactively, and Downloads to access the data files.

Citation

Feedback

To report data issues, request new cities or measures, or leave general feedback, contact the DDL team at info@devdatalab.org.