Dataset for Paper in European Planning Studies titled "Accommodating Urban Population Changes in the European Union Through Infill, Densification, Inclusion, and Extension, 1980-2020". Uploaded on 31 January 2026

Cities in the European Union accommodated population changes during 1980-2020 by adapting their urban forms in four complementary processes: (1) the infill of vacant lands within existing urban footprints with new built-up areas, (2) the densification of existing built-up areas, (3) the inclusion of existing settlements in their expansion areas, and (4) the outward extension of their built-up areas. We report on the contribution of each of these four processes to accommodating urban population changes during a given decade. We use built-up area and population data from the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) to derive urban footprint boundaries and estimate the shares of the population added to cities in every decade—the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s—that was accommodated by the four different changes in urban form. Our dataset includes 497 cities and metropolitan areas in the 26 countries (excluding Cyprus) in the European Union (EU) that had 50,000 people or more in 2020. The increase in infill of existing footprints typically accommodated the largest share of the added population of EU cities in all four decades—compared to inclusion and outward extension—while built-up area densities within existing city footprints generally declined.