This paper reviews the use of outlier detection approaches in urban traffic analysis. We divide existing solutions into two main categories: flow outlier detection and trajectory outlier detection. The first category groups solutions that detect flow outliers and includes statistical, similarity and pattern mining approaches. The second category contains solutions where the trajectory outliers are derived, including offline processing for trajectory outliers and online processing for sub-trajectory outliers. Solutions in each of these categories are described, illustrated, and discussed, and open perspectives and research trends are drawn. Compared to the state-of-the-art survey papers, the contribution of this paper lies in providing a deep analysis of all the kinds of representations in urban traffic data, including flow values, segment flow values, trajectories, and sub-trajectories. In this context, we can better understand the intuition, limitations, and benefits of the existing outlier urban traffic detection algorithms. As a result, practitioners can receive some guidance for selecting the most suitable methods for their particular case. INDEX TERMS Urban traffic analysis, outlier detection, machine learning, data mining.