About 280 thousand Cypriots dwell in cities, 113 in towns and suburban areas and 124 thousand in the rural areas of the country, accounting for 54%, 22% and 24% respectively, according to a Eurostat data release, on the occasion of the EU Urban Agenda endorsement, by EU ministers in Amsterdam.

Eurostat draws attention to employment figures in the three areas, 69.2%, 67.3% and 65.7% respectively as the Urban Agenda center theme, considers cities “as both the source of and solution to many of today’s economic, social and environmental challenges”.

Eurostat says that cities are home to a large share of the population aged 20 to 64 in the European Union (EU) and among EU city dwellers aged 20-64, 70% were in employment. Moreover the risk of poverty or social exclusion affected around 24% of all city dwellers.

In 2015 in the EU, around 124 million people aged 20 to 64, or 41% of the population of this age group, were city dwellers. At Member State level more than half of the population aged 20-64 lived in cities in the United Kingdom (60%) and Cyprus (54%). At the opposite end of the scale, around 1 in 5 persons aged 20 to 64 lived in cities in Slovakia (19%), Slovenia (20%) and Luxembourg (21%).

On average in the EU, 70.0% of city dwellers aged 20 to 64 were employed in 2015, with employment rates ranging from 79.8% in Sweden to 53.0% in Greece. In the majority of Member States, cities recorded higher employment rates than rural areas, in particular in Bulgaria (with a 16.7 percentage point difference) and Lithuania (10.5 pp). In contrast, in eleven Member States, the employment rate was lower in cities than in rural areas, most markedly in Belgium (9.1 pp), Austria (8.7 pp), Germany (6.0 pp), Greece and France (both 5.6 pp), the Netherlands (5.5 pp) and the United Kingdom (4.2 pp).

In 2014 in the EU, around 50 million city dwellers (or 24.4% of the population living in cities) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. At Member State level the highest shares of city dwellers at risk of poverty or social exclusion were observed in Greece (34.1%), Bulgaria (30.0%), Belgium (28.6%), Austria (28.3%), Romania (28.3%) and Italy (27.8%), the lowest in the Czech Republic (13.9%), Slovakia (15.0%), Luxembourg (16.1%) and Finland (16.6%). In the majority of Member States, city dwellers were less at risk of poverty or social exclusion than rural dwellers, in particular in Romania (with a 22.4 percentage point difference) and Bulgaria (21.4 pp). In contrast, in seven Member States the risk of poverty or social exclusion was higher in cities than in rural areas: Austria (with a 14.2 pp difference), Denmark (9.4 pp), Belgium (7.5 pp), the United Kingdom (6.6 pp), Germany (5.3 pp), France (3.3 pp) and the Netherlands (3.1 pp).

For Cyprus the absolute numbers and rates go as follows: 110.000 in cities 50.000 in suburban areas and towns and 74.000 in rural areas, susceptible to poverty and social exclusion at 25.1% 28.2% 31%, respectively, according to 2014 data