There are significant discrepancies between the EU Member States, some of them having a mainly urban population while in others the population is mainly rural.
With an overall average score of 6.9 on a scale from 0 to 10, the EU urban population aged 16 and over was globally satisfied with their city's offer of recreational and green spaces, albeit to a lesser extent than the population living in thinly-populated areas (7.4/10). In the EU in 2014, the share of the population living in cities stood at 40.2% in 2014, compared with 27.8% for rural areas and 32.0% for towns and suburbs.
Across Member States, more than half of the population was living in cities in the United Kingdom (58.6%) and Cyprus (54.7%). A large part of the population was also concentrated in urban areas notably in Spain (48.5%), Malta (48.0%), Bulgaria (45.7%) and the Netherlands (45.2%).
In contrast, the largest share of the population was living in rural areas in Luxembourg (51.0%), followed by Slovenia (49.8%), Lithuania (47.6%), Slovakia (45.6%), Denmark (44.4%), Ireland (43.5%) and Romania (43.1%).
The population living in intermediate areas was predominant in Belgium (57.1%), while the population was almost evenly distributed between urban, intermediate and rural areas in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Finland.