Although the world is urbanizing at increasing speed, research on urban features of the residential environments and their impact on health and mortality appears to be confined to either vastly developing countries or historical settings. Apart from the lack of universal concepts of what is defined as rural and urban, studies on areas variation are often limited to aggregated population data and often fail to account for within-area heterogeneity. To overcome these restrictions, we combine two register-based data sources, provided by the Institute of Cartography and Statistics of Andalusia, Spain. The linkage of geographic and demographic small area data for 5381 census tracts in Andalusia and the 10% mortality follow-up allows us to estimate effects of urban characteristics in the residential environment on individual level mortality risks. Preliminary results indicate the existence of a small but highly significant mortality disadvantage of urban dwellers in modern day Andalusia.