[othello]

This is actually due to the inclusion of suburbs and exurbs in the “urban” category for US, Canada & Australia.

Half of the US population lives in the suburbs (see above posters). What we would recognize as a real urban environment only accounts for less than a third of the US population (98M people).

[arethuza]

Maybe its my UK bias - the distinction between urban and suburban doesn't seem to feature a lot in statistics here - things are often just usually "urban" (including suburbs) or "rural".

I did see a figure of about 55% of everyone in England and Wales living in suburbs - but I suspect our suburbs look pretty dense to someone from Houston or indeed Achiltibuie!