Largest urban areas of the European Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This is a list of all the urban areas of the European Union which have greater than 750,000 inhabitants each in 2011.

This list is an attempt to present a consistent list of population figures for urban areas in the European Union. All the figures here have been compiled by Demographia.

[edit] Important notes

This is a list of urban areas, not a list of metropolitan areas. Urban areas are contiguous built-up areas where houses are typically not more than 200 m apart (discounting rivers, parks, roads, industrial fields, etc.). A metropolitan area is an urban area plus the satellite cities around the urban area and the agricultural land in between.
This is a list of urban areas, not a list of administrative cities. For example, the list below contains the urban area of Lille-Kortrijk. Lille and Kortrijk remain two very distinct cities, each belonging to a different country, culture and language area. For a list of the largest cities of the European Union by population, please see Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits.
The study of urban areas is useful to analyse how cities develop, which in turn can be used to define transportation, planning and environmental policies, to adjust administrative boundaries etc. At the same time its limitations have to be acknowledged. It is a purely geographic study and disregards all other factors that contribute to the analysis of the functional city. For instance, several cities in the European Union such as Brussels and London have introduced green belts which impacts the urban area but not the "perceived city" as these green belts have now become integrated in what people consider to be the functional city. Furthermore the list does not make a difference between cities that have multiple satellites and cities that do not. Therefore two cities with the same demographics for their urban area will have an equal ranking on this list, even if one of the two cities may be much larger as it is the core of a number of satellites.
If you are used to higher figures for the cities listed below (London is sometimes listed with 14 million inhabitants, Stuttgart is frequently listed with 2.2 million inhabitants, Munich with 2 million or more, etc.), this is because figures here are only for urban areas, which are typically smaller than metropolitan areas. Urban areas can be computed by private people or institutions using maps and looking where the built-up area stops. Metropolitan areas, which imply much more complicated definitions (such as the proportion of people in satellite cities working in the core of the metropolitan area), can be accurately computed only by statistical offices, after they have chosen a definition for metropolitan areas.

[edit] Urban areas over 750,000 inhabitants

Ruhr area (Essen)

Katowice (Upper-Silesian Metropolitan Area)

Lisbon

Frankfurt

Rank	Urban Area	State	Population (2011 est.)	Density (per km²)	Annual growth rate (%)
1	Paris	France	12,885,000	3,400	0.83
2	London	United Kingdom	10,585,000	5,100	0.07
3	Ruhr area (Ruhrgebiet)	Germany	7,295,000	2,800	0.01
4	Madrid	Spain	5,410,000	5,500	0.27
5	Milan	Italy	4,360,000	1,800	-0.16
6	Barcelona	Spain	4,210,000	5,100	0.12
7	Berlin	Germany	3,450,000	3,500	0.00
8	Athens	Greece	3,265,000	4,800	0.29
9	Lisbon	Portugal	3,035,000	3,100	0.39
10	Naples	Italy	3,020,000	3,900	-0.13
11	Rome	Italy	2,715,000	3,200
12	Katowice (Upper-Silesian Metropolis)	Poland	2,500,000	3,400	0.11
13	Frankfurt	Germany	2,300,000	3,400	0.50
14	West Midlands (Greater Birmingham)	United Kingdom	2,290,000	3,800	-0.03
15	Greater Manchester	United Kingdom	2,240,000	4,000	-0.03
16	Lyon	France	2,205,000	2,500	0.39
17	Cologne/Bonn	Germany	2,055,000	2,200	0.50
18	Bucharest	Romania	1,930,000	6,800	0.10^[1]
19	Brussels	Belgium	1,900,000	2,500	0.02^[1]
20	Hamburg	Germany	1,790,000	2,500	0.43^[1]
21	Marseille	France	1,715,000	3,800	1.04^[1]
22	Warsaw	Poland	1,710,000	3,100	0.67
23	Budapest	Hungary	1,700,000	1,900	-0.19
24	Leeds-Bradford	United Kingdom	1,540,000	4,100	0.24^[1]
26	Porto	Portugal	1,475,000	3,600	1.05^[1]
27	Glasgow	United Kingdom	1,470,000	1,200	0.46^[1]
28	Munich	Germany	1,350,000	2,900	0.72^[1]
29	Turin	Italy	1,315,000	2,700	-0.16^[1]
30	Stockholm	Sweden	1,285,000	3,300	0.58^[1]
31	Stuttgart	Germany	1,270,000	3,000
32	Toulouse	France	1,202,000	3,300	1.87^[1]
33	Copenhagen	Denmark	1,199,224	2,593
34	Lille	France	1,150,000	2,550	0.04^[1]
35	Sofia	Bulgaria	1,175,000	5,700	0.78^[1]
36	Helsinki	Finland	1,172,000	2,500	0.81^[1]
37	Prague	Czech Republic	1,150,000	4,000	-0.07^[1]
38	Dublin	Ireland	1,115,000	2,400	1.14^[1]
39	Lille--Kortrijk	France, Belgium	1,050,000	2,200	0.50^[1]
40	Amsterdam	Netherlands	1,050,000	2,500	0.41^[1]
41	Nuremberg	Germany	1,020,000	3,000
42	Nice	France	980,000	1,400	0.52^[1]
43	Antwerp	Belgium	960,000	1,500	0.05^[1]
44	Łódź	Poland	910,000	5,100	-0.67^[1]
45	Toulouse	France	905,000	1,100	0.72^[1]
46	Tyneside (Greater Newcastle)	United Kingdom	890,000	4,200	0.16^[1]
47	Palermo	Italy	875,000	6,000	0.12^[1]
48	Bordeaux	France	845,000	800	0.60^[1]
49	Thessaloniki	Greece	840,000	4,300	0.39^[1]
50	Liverpool Urban Area (Excluding Birkenhead Urban Area)	United Kingdom	815,000	4,400	0.11^[1]
51	Valencia	Spain	810,000	3,000	0.29^[1]
52	Gdańsk (Tricity)	Poland	775,000	5,000
53	Krakow	Poland	760,000	3,500
54	Florence	Italy	750,000	2,800
55	Riga	Latvia	750,000	2,900
56	Bilbao	Spain	750,000	5,800
57	Seville	Spain	750,000	5,600

[edit] Non EU urban areas

[edit] EFTA countries

Two European Free Trade Association countries have urban areas that would be included in the list if they were EU member states.

Urban Area	State	Population	Density (per km²)	Growth rate (%)
Oslo	Norway	715,000	2,800	0.99^[1]
Zürich	Switzerland	740,000	3,000	0.35^[1]

[edit] Non EFTA Countries

Some very large European urban areas are excluded since they are not part of an EU member state:

Urban Area	State	Population	remarks
Moscow	Russia	13,680,000
Istanbul	Turkey	13,275,000	including the Asian part of the city
Saint Petersburg	Russia	4,555,000
Kiev	Ukraine	2,815,000
Baku	Azerbaijan	1,985,000
Minsk	Belarus	1,855,000
Kharkov	Ukraine	1,450,000
Nizhni Novgorod	Russia	1,270,000
Belgrade	Serbia	1,155,000
Kazan	Russia	1,140,000
Tbilisi	Georgia	1,120,000
Samara	Russia	1,120,000
Dnepropetrovsk	Ukraine	1,100,000
Yerevan	Armenia	1,110,000
Odessa	Ukraine	1,010,000
Donetsk	Ukraine	970,000