The population and steets of Almyra City are an important factor for the overall socioeconomic development of the city. Inscriptions show that Palmyra's early sociopolitical structure was based on four different tribes, whose members inhabited different sections of the city. The four tribes included the sacerdotal Bene Komare, the Arab tribe Bene Maazin, and the western tribe Bene Mattabol. Each tribe had their own cult temple and worshipped the god Bel, which represented the city as a whole.
The population of the town has risen from 40,000 in 2005 to over 100,000 today, owing in part to the influx of internally displaced residents. During the pre-Islamic era, the city was an important commercial crossroad and home to pre-Islamic treasures. It is now home to several UNESCO heritage sites, including the ancient tomb of Jonah, which was destroyed by the Islamic State in June 2014.
Palmyra was the first city-state built in the region, following the Greco-Roman model. This was a revolutionary concept in Syria at the time, as most of the country's urban development was done through religious and royal edifices. The Roman period also saw the rise of large-scale urbanism, and colonnades were widespread throughout the region.
The population of Almyra City was categorized into two categories: those under the age of 18 and those over the age of 65. There were 3,004 households with children under the age of eighteen and sixteen, and thirty-two percent of the households were not family-based. Another category of households included individuals, and 10.1% of the households had an older person living alone.