In England and Wales, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council (UDC), which shared local government responsibilities with a county council.
In England and Wales, urban districts and rural districts were created in 1894 by the Local Government Act 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) as subdivisions of administrative counties. An urban district usually contained a single parish, while a rural district might contain many. Urban districts were considered to have more problems with public health than rural areas, and so urban district councils had more funding and greater powers than comparable rural districts.
Urban districts normally covered smaller towns, usually with populations of fewer than 30,000. When the 1894 Act came into force on 31 December 1894 there had been 753 urban districts, of which 692 had previously been local government districts, 30 had been improvement commissioners districts and 31 were places newly given urban powers in 1894. The number of urban districts initially increased after 1894 as more places sought urban powers, but implementation of the recommendations of a series of county reviews as established by the Local Government Act 1929 saw a net decrease of 159 between 1932 and 1938. In many instances smaller urban districts were merged with their surrounding rural districts, with the result that new districts emerged covering rural as well as urban parishes.