In a system and method for measuring global urbanicity, trapezoid shapes are built based on latitude/longitude boundaries using two different scales in two dimensions, thus yielding four different shapes/sizes of trapezoids. A multiplier is applied to adjust the count within a trapezoid to compensate for the fact that these trapezoids delineated by latitude/longitude lines will diminish in size as they approach the poles of the Earth. Census data is applied from a given country, and then summed up using an external data set pertaining to counts. Finally, the counts are rolled up into a set number of urbanicity “bands” or levels as desired for a particular application.