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International City Locations Dataset
NLP / Natural Language Processing
Tags and Keywords
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Free
About
This dataset provides an accurate and up-to-date database of the world's cities and towns, designed for ease of use. It has been meticulously built using authoritative sources including the NGIA, US Geological Survey, US Census Bureau, and NASA. The dataset currently includes over 4 million unique cities and towns from every country globally (with approximately 48 thousand in the basic database) and was last refreshed on May 11, 2025. Each entry is cleaned and aggregated from official sources, providing precise latitude and longitude coordinates, and is structured simply as a single CSV file with concise field names, ensuring only one entry per city.
Columns
- city: The city/town name as a Unicode string (e.g., Goiânia). There are 44,512 unique city names out of 48.1k valid entries.
- city_ascii: The city name in ASCII format (e.g., Goiania), blank if an ASCII representation is not possible. There are 44,281 unique ASCII city names, with 2 missing values.
- lat: The latitude coordinate of the city/town. All 48.1k entries are valid, with a range from -54.9 to 81.7.
- lng: The longitude coordinate of the city/town. All 48.1k entries are valid, with a range from -180 to 179.
- country: The name of the city/town's country. This column has 242 unique country names, with India (15%) and United States (11%) being the most frequent.
- iso2: The alpha-2 ISO code for the country. There are 241 unique codes, with 'IN' (India) and 'US' (United States) being the most frequent.
- iso3: The alpha-3 ISO code for the country. This column also has 241 unique codes, with 'IND' and 'USA' being the most frequent.
- admin_name: The name of the highest-level administrative region (e.g., a state or province). This field can be blank, with 201 missing values and 4,046 unique names.
- capital: Indicates if the city is a capital. Possible values are 'primary' (country's capital), 'admin' (first-level admin capital), or 'minor' (lower-level admin capital). This column has 32.9k missing values (69%).
- population: An estimated urban population for the city. This data is only available for some prominent cities, with 251 missing values (1%). The population ranges from 0 to 37.8 million.
- id: A unique 10-digit ID generated by SimpleMaps, designed for consistency across different datasets and releases. All 48.1k entries are valid.
Distribution
The dataset is provided as a single CSV file named
worldcities.csv, with a file size of 5.1 MB. It contains approximately 48,100 unique city entries, with each city having a single, distinct entry.Usage
This dataset is highly suitable for:
- Geospatial analysis and mapping applications.
- Demographic studies and population distribution analysis.
- Urban planning and development projects.
- Creating location-based services and applications.
- Developing global city directories or search functionalities.
Coverage
The dataset offers global geographic coverage, encompassing cities and towns from every country in the world. It was last refreshed on May 11, 2025, and is expected to be updated annually. While the dataset aims for broad coverage, population estimates are specifically available for only some prominent cities, and administrative region names ('admin_name') or capital status ('capital') may sometimes be blank or missing for certain entries.
License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Who Can Use It
This dataset is ideal for:
- Data scientists and analysts requiring global city data for research or model building.
- GIS professionals for mapping and spatial analysis projects.
- Urban planners and researchers studying urbanisation trends.
- Developers building applications that require location intelligence.
- Businesses needing verified city data for market analysis or logistics.
Dataset Name Suggestions
- World Cities Data
- Global City Database
- International City Locations
- Universal City Reference
- SimpleMaps World Cities
Attributes
Original Data Source: International City Locations Dataset
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