According to the World Bank report titled East Asia’s Changing Urban Landscape: Measuring a Decade of Spatial Growth, Cambodia has a very small amount of urban area and urban population. Phnom Penh, with over one million people, remains the only major urban area in the country.
Country findings
- Cambodia has the fourth-smallest amount of urban land among the countries studied (after the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste).
- The amount of urban area grew from 110 square kilometers in 2000 to 160 in 2010. Only 0.1% of its total land mass was urban, the lowest proportion in East Asia after Lao PDR, Mongolia, and Papua New Guinea.
- Although the absolute amount of new built-up area was small, the rate of urban spatial expansion was the second fastest after Lao PDR: 4.3% a year, on average.
- Cambodia also has among the smallest but fastest-growing urban populations, growing at 4.4% a year from 920,000 people to 1.4 million between 2000 and 2010.
- Cambodia shares many urban characteristics with its neighbor Lao PDR, but has a much higher average urban population density: 8,600 people per square kilometer in Cambodia in 2010, in contrast to 3,200 in Lao PDR.
- The two other settlements in Cambodia sometimes considered cities are Baat Dambang and Siem Reap, though the urban populations of both were less than 100,000 people in 2010.
- Siem Reap doubled in size and tripled in population between 2000 and 2010.
