There is increasing appreciation in the social sciences that context is an important element in understanding social, economic, cultural, political and demographic processes.An important element in context is the type of settlement in which people live and work and so, it is vital to be able to categorise people into particular settlements types. This book brings together a leading team of social scientists to present the latest information on urbanization around the world, highlighting examples of development patterns that are not adequately captured by the UN's type of reporting systems and drawing attention to other ways of representing current trends.