This polygon shapefile contains the boundaries of urban areas with dense areas of human habitation worldwide derived from 2002-2003 MODIS satellite data at 1 km. resolution. There are no scale ranks and data is missing just a couple polygons for points included in populated places. Data could be split apart (intersected with thiessen polygons derived from populated places points) and joined with populated places points to derive names and population values (and density). These data are represented at 1:10,000,000 scale. This layer is part of the Natural Earth Collection (v.2.0.0).Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10, 1:50 and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.