City time series
Shanghai's urban expansion: 1975–2025, built-up area 4.2×
- China
- GHSL epochs 1975–2025
At a glance
- Shanghai's built-up area grew from about 170 km² in 1975 to 718 km² in 2025 — 4.2× the 1975 footprint, or +2.9% per year compounded.
- Over the same window the urban centre's population 4.8×, reaching about 30.7M by 2025.
- The current footprint of 718 km² is equivalent to about 211 Central Parks.
Key growth numbers
- Built-up area 4.2× +2.9% per year since 1975
- Population 4.8× about 30.7M in 2025
- GHSL epochs 11 five-year steps, no interpolation
Shanghai: population and built-up area, epoch by epoch
Shanghai
Data table
| Epoch | Population | Built-up km² |
|---|---|---|
| 1975 | 6.4M | 170 km² |
| 1980 | 6.7M | 190 km² |
| 1985 | 7.9M | 217 km² |
| 1990 | 9.5M | 249 km² |
| 1995 | 11.9M | 324 km² |
| 2000 | 15.1M | 420 km² |
| 2005 | 17.9M | 492 km² |
| 2010 | 21.1M | 581 km² |
| 2015 | 24.1M | 670 km² |
| 2020 | 27.8M | 705 km² |
| 2025 | 30.7M | 718 km² |
Method & data
All numbers come from the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL): the European Commission's Joint Research Centre publishes, for every urban centre on Earth, the total built-up area and resident population on five-year epochs from 1975 to 2025.
An epoch is a full mapping pass, not an estimate for that calendar year; a metric the source does not report for an epoch is shown as missing — values are never interpolated or extrapolated between epochs.
The numbers stay inside the GHSL Urban Centre boundary — a stable, data-derived footprint of the contiguous built-up core, not an administrative city limit; figures are therefore not comparable to city-proper census counts.
A night-lights curve (VIIRS) is planned as a second series and is not part of this page yet; the epoch table above is the complete published dataset for this city.
Frequently asked questions
How much has Shanghai grown between 1975 and 2025?
Shanghai's built-up area expanded 4.2× — from roughly 170 km² to 718 km² inside the GHSL urban-centre boundary.
How many people live in Shanghai as of 2025?
The GHSL epoch for 2025 reports about 30.7M people inside Shanghai's urban centre.
Where do these numbers come from?
From the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL), published free and openly by the European Commission — see the method section above for the epoch semantics.
Related pages
China country profile: key metrics vs world median →
Other cities
Data & method
GHS Urban Centre Database R2024A, European Commission Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0); built-up area and population per five-year epoch, consumed unmodified from the tabular release.
City outline: the GHSL urban-centre boundary, simplified for display — illustrative, not a navigable boundary.