Talk:List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits

Moscow

What about Moscow? It's population is over 10,000,000.

If Russia ever joins the EU I think that this list will have quite a few changes! -- Q Chris 07:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it's quite safe to assume Russia won't be joining the EU in quite a while. Besides, the largest part (by area) of Russia is actually in Asia... JIP | Talk 18:59, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Asia" is the westernmost area of Anatolia/eastern Turkey (wich inclued Troy & Ismirn) followed by Capadocia

"Europe" is either a deity from lebanon or a town in macedonia

Thus Asia & Europe were BOTH in Turkey/Ottoman Empire.

Also Arian were a tribe fro Persia/Iran

All of the middle easterners %& north africans are INDO EUROPEAN thus Caucasian

Eurasia (or should we say eursaiafrica?) is composed of a lot of RANDOM partitioned peninsulas/subdivisions/Areas such as europa, africa, arabian/middle east, indian sub continent, siberia , china , SEA and other random names ... all randomly defined by a dozen lunatics on a closed room! Sotavento (talk) 19:11, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Seville

And SEVILLE??Where is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.36.116.151 (talk) 16:48, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Seville (Sevilla, in Spanish) is number 31 in the list. Problem solved! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joekiedoe (talk • contribs) 22:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Paris

The Wikipedia article on Paris gives populations of 9,644,507 and 11,174,743 for the urban and metropolitan areas respectively. Surely this makes Paris the biggest city in the EU by population?

Not necessarily, the article states "within city limits". Now I find it hard to believe the London figure, but that is a different issue. -- Q Chris 07:40, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

This whole article is an inconsistent mess, using the numbers for Greater London, which is certainly not a population "within city limits," and using (outdated) Eurostat data, which also do not necessarily refer to populations "within city limits." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.63.170.193 (talk) 08:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

New data (Barcelona)

Barcelona's Metropolitan Area is 5.150.000 (updated 2006) in 3.925 km2 (1.515 ml2), as it is observed in... http://bcnip.blogsome.com/la-region-metropolitana-de-Barcelona (data 2005)

==

Ok, sorry Sjorford, I don't mean to be rude or something but you mix up the metropolitan areas population for Brussels, Nicosia, Luxembourg etc with the population of those cities...moreover the statement that all capitals of the EU except for Valetta have the largest population is FALSE, since Brussels is only the 5th largest Belgian municipality and Nicosia (Lefkosia) is not the biggest city in Cyprus either. Again, this list clearly deals with cities/towns/municipalities and NOT with metropolitan areas/conurbations etc. It is based on official date from all 25 census agencies all over Europe. As I wrote earlier, I would encourage you to complete a list of metropolitan areas ( though there is no concensus in the E.U. on the definition of a metropolitan area ) but I'd ask you to refrain from correcting this list except for the CORRECT INFORMATION from the statistical agencies on the population of a city/census estimates and orth./gramm. mistakes. VicFromTheBlock

No, sorry Brussels is out of this list, this is not a list of metropolitan area but rather a list of cities/towns/municipalities. There is a clear distrinction between these 3 and a metropolital areas. If you wish to create a list of metropolitan areas, I encourage you to do so but please don't mix it up with this list. VicFromTheBlock

I know what you mean, but if you ask any Belgian "what is the largest city in Belgium?" they will say "Brussels". It's worth mentioning the fact that the municipality is quite small, but the larger population of Brussels should definitely be in the list. I don't dispute that the data is "official", but, just as there is no Europe-wide definition of a metropolis, there is actually no Europe-wide definition of a city either. Some cities are drawn quite tightly around their traditional area, others spread out to take in many commuter towns. They're just local government areas, after all. In the case of some larger cities like Brussels, they

This isn't a unique occurrence - the figure in the list of 7m+ for London is actually Greater London. The City of London has a population of only about 2,000, and there was in fact no overall London government for a good chunk of the last 20 years (apologies if you're British and already know all this :) But London is clearly "the biggest city in Europe", by any reasonable definition of those words, so the larger figure - the more representative figure - goes in. There shouldn't be too many extreme cases like these, and perhaps they should all be mentioned as footnotes. But to exclude Brussels because of a quirk of local government is just not right. -- sjorford 09:31, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I do agree with you on London, the situation is confusing given the fact that there is a different usage for the City of London, (pop. 7,807) however within the Greater London area ( Inner/Outer London for British census purposes) only two places have a status of a city per se the City of London ( The Square Mile ) and the City of Westminster. Places like Croydon or Kensington and Chelsea have only a status of a borough ( and not of a city/municipality/town )therefore would not be eligible to be on that list, that is what pushed me to include the whole city of London on the list as was the fact that the Greater London has a mayor. At this point, I am not sure whether we should live London the way it is or rather include boroughs. I guess I need some more feedback on that.

When it comes to Brussels, it's far less complicated. Brussels is a municipality that is part of Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, one of I think 18 different municipalities. Each of them has a clearly defined status as a city. Brussels is actually a part of conurbation since other cities in the Bruxelles-Capitale have a similar population to Brussels like Uccle, Schaerbeek, Ixelles or Anderlecht. Of course, when it comes to prestige or importance Brussels would certainly deserve the place on the list but it's only a list based on the population VicFromTheBlock

I'm sorry but considering the whole of London as a single municipality and then considering Brussels as 19 seperate municipalities seems quite absurd. I was quite astonished to see Brussels not even being in the top 100. That's *ridiculous*, as is the fact that London municipality supposedly has thrice the population of the second runner-up. On semantics, you're right, the City of Brussels is not the Brussels Capital Region. However, the latter is *not* a metropolitan area (the Brussels Metropolitan Area extends far into Flemish and Walloon Brabant). Look at it this way : Paris has arrondissements, Brussels has municipalities. But they're both part of the city itself. The City of Brussels is intricately linked to the other 17 municipalities so as to form not a conurbation but a city. Frankly, that list comes as quite a joke when you mention that Brussels is the 5th biggest city in Belgium... What the ? Yamarus

---

Anyone could enlighten me about the city of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat or L'Hospitalet? What is the official name of the city. VicFromTheBlock

UK figures, mid-2003

Latest figures for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland:

City	2001 Pop	Rk	2003 Pop	Rk	Diff	%	Rk	Notes
London	7,172,091	1	7,387,900	1	215,809	3%	-
Birmingham	970,892	15	992,100	15	21,208	2%	-
Leeds	443,247	57	715,200	26	271,953	61%	+31	massive rise?
Glasgow	629,501	30	577,090	37	-52,411	-8%	-7
Sheffield	439,866	58	512,500	46	72,634	17%	+12
Bradford	293,717	94	477,800	54	184,083	63%	+40	massive rise?
Edinburgh	430,082	59	448,370	58	18,288	4%	+1
Liverpool	469,017	52	441,800	60	-27,217	-6%	-8
Manchester	394,269	64	432,500	61	38,231	10%	+3
Bristol	420,556	61	391,500	65	-29,056	-7%	-4
Cardiff	292,150	96	315,100	85	22,950	8%	+11
Coventry	303,475	91	305,000	92	1,525	1%	-1
Leicester	330,574	80	283,900	96	-46,674	-14%	-16
Sunderland			283,100	97				new entry
Nottingham			273,900	99				new entry
Belfast	277,391	99	271,596		-5,795	-2%		dropped out
Newcastle upon Tyne			266,600					outside list
Brighton and Hove			251,500					outside list
Kingston upon Hull	301,416	92	247,900		-53,516	-18%		dropped out

I haven't put them straight into the article as there seem to be some huge differences - the figures for Bradford and Leeds particularly are 60% higher than what's in the article. Is there some other standard definition of their city boundaries, or has http://www.citypopulation.de/ just drawn up their own? (The metropolitan boroughs for these two do cover quite large rural areas, which are included in the official figures.) -- sjorford 13:29, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The reason for the discrepancy is because the figures provided by www.citypopulation.de are only for the urbanized part inside the city. This is a rather phony concept... But anyway, what we are concerned with here is city population, be it urban, rurban, or rural. The list is about population inside the city administrative boundaries. So I am replacing the figures for the English cities by the 2003 estimates from UK statistics. Hardouin 16:53, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"London" is not officially a city by the UK definition. It is in fact a region. For this reason it should not be included. We should be highlighting the ridiculous way British cities are measured, rather than including London just because "it looks stupid if we don't". If London is 7-8 million then Manchester is 2-2.5 million. 86.144.113.200 20:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

If Greater London is being included as 7 million then why isn't greater manchester's 2.6 million, merseyside's 1.4million, and the 'city of leeds' 750,000? Anything but is hypocrisy Gytrash (talk) 19:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're going to list regions like London for 7m, Manchester for 2.6m etc, Leeds is 2.1m. 761,000 is the figure for the city, not the city region. --Yunchy (talk) 15:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

French cities

the picture of paris in the article is a picture of La Défense which is not in the inner city limits, you schould better change it...

VicFromTheBlock is obviously not a well informed person. The 2004 estimates that I gave for French cities are official and provided by Insee ([1]). So before reverting and accusing people, double-check the facts first, you will avoid appearing rash and ignorant. Hardouin 16:30, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hardouin, please don't power trip. The fact that I corrected your list means simply that the information that you have provided is in fact untrue and deals with metropolitan areas, it has nothing to do with you personally. It has more to do with the fact that you are in fact unable to understand certain concepts. If you continue to vandalize this page, I will ask admin to have it protected. I also want to say that I do not vandalize your "western european metropolital areas" pages that in my opinion are incomplete, misleading and leave a lot to be desired. You must understand that the french concepts are not universal throughout the European Union and that this list deals exclusively with cities or towns and not metropolital areas, thank you for understanding. VicFromTheBlock 8:27,PM 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Threats I see... VicFromTheBlock, threats only reveal inner insecurity and lack of self-confidence. Plus, correcting "your list" (as you call it), is not the same thing as vandalizing it. But then, like older people used to say, "If you want to kill your dog, accuse it of rabies".

As for "my list" as you call it (as if Wikipedia articles were the private property of someone!), well if you disagree with some aspects of Largest urban areas of the European Union, you should express your concerns in the discussion page there.

Finally, there are no such things as "French concepts". There are definitions that are used by governments, geographers, or statisticians across Europe, or even the world for that matter, but more on this below.

No more threats and accusations please. Only reasonable discussions between adult people, and striving to achieve a consensus. Thank you. Hardouin 15:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cities vs. metropolitan/intercommunal entities

The problem with the list in this article is that it sorely lacks a definition of what is exactly a city/town as an administrative unit. Therefore, the article is basically comparing apples and pears. Let me precise this: at first glance it may seem easy to say what is a city/town, and what is not, but actually, if you look at things in detail, the situation is extremely blurry. In many countries, there is no such thing as a clean-cut city/town that we can easily differentiate from other administrative units. A few examples: starting with English speaking countries first, in the UK and Ireland there are no administrative units that are called "city" or "town". In the UK there exist cities and towns, but they are not recognized as administrative units. "City" is a honorific title that is dearly sought in the UK, and granted by the queen, but it is not an administrative unit. For instance, Truro (19,000 inhabitants) is the capital city of Cornwall, and was granted city status by Queen Victoria in 1877. However, the city of Truro is not an administrative unit. Truro is located inside the district of Carrick (88,911 inhabitants), which is the lowest level of administrative division (Carrick is divided into wards, which are electoral units only). So here we have a city that is not an administrative unit.

Another example: Guildford is a town (failed to obtain city status in 2000) which is the county town of Surrey. The town of Guildford (66,000 inhabitants) has its own mayor, elected every year. However, the town of Guilford is not an administrative unit, but it is part of the borough of Guildford (128,944 inhabitants), which is much larger than the town of Guilford, and include other towns such as Ash for instance. The borough of Guildford is headed by a "Chief Executive", which is clearly distinct from the "mayor of Guildford". Again, the borough of Guildford is divided into wards that are only electoral units. There is not even a "Guildford ward", because the town of Guildford is the reunion of several wards of the borough of Guildford. So again we have another very blurry situation, where a town/city does not really correspond to any administrative unit.

Other examples across Europe: in Portugal there are no "cities" (cidade) either. The lowest level of administrative unit is the parish (freguesia). Above the parish is the "council" (concelho). Councils are quite similar to rural districts in England, or civil townships in the US. However, a few councils are very urban and more akin to what we think of as a "city". Above councils are districts (distritos), which are quite similar to English or US counties. Now, the figure given in the list for the city of Lisbon is in fact the council of Lisbon (564,657 inhabitants). The council of Lisbon has no mayor, but it has a president. Below the council of Lisbon are parishes with each their president of parish assembly. Above the council of Lisbon is the district of Lisbon (2,135,992 inhabitants), with a civil governor at its head. Does the city of Lisbon correspond to the council of Lisbon? or does it correspond to the district of Lisbon? Again a very blurry situation.

In Poland, there are powiats, which are like English districts or US townships. In very urban areas, some powiats were made municipal powiats, and the figures in the list for Polish cities refer to municipal powiats. However, in the case of Warsaw, the municipal powiat of Warsaw is headed by a president (not a mayor), and below it are several independent municipalities with each their own mayor. So here we come to an important point, we need to distinguish between a "city" properly speaking, and a metropolitan/intercommunal entity. The municipal powiat of Warsaw is clearly a metropolitan/intercommunal entity, made up of independent municipalities with each their mayor. Nonetheless, it was included in the list. On the other hand, the Brussels Capital Region, which is also a metropolitan/intercommunal entity with a minister-president at its head, and several independent municipalities below, with each their mayor, was not included in the list. So why was the municipal powiat of Warsaw (494 km²) deemed to be a city and included in the list, when the Brussels Capital Region (161 km²) was not? Here there is a total lack of coherence.

Another metropolitan/intercommunal entity is Greater London. Greater London is not a city properly speaking (despite it being headed by a so-called "mayor"), but it is a metropolitan/intercommunal entity called Greater London Authority (1,580 km²). The word "mayor" in itself means nothing. There are entities that are clearly cities but which do not have a mayor (such as Paris until 1975), and there are entities which have a so-called "mayor" but which are not cities properly speaking (such as Greater London or the municipality of Chongqing in China). Greater London is made up of independent municipalities, called boroughs, in exactly the same way as the Brussels Capital Region and the municipal powiat of Warsaw, and the London boroughs have mayors, and sometimes even city status (e.g. the Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of the City of Westminster). London boroughs even freely twin with other cities of Europe or the world, such as the borough of Croydon which is twinned with the city of Arnhem, Netherlands. Greater London, on the other hand, never twins with other cities, as it is not a city itself.

So here is the point: we have to decide whether or not we include metropolitan/intercommunal entities in the list. If we do not include them, then we ought to delete Greater London and Warsaw from our list. If we include them, then we must not only include Greater London and Warsaw, but we must also include Brussels Capital Region, Urban Community of Lyon, Urban Community of Lille Métropole, and so on.
Now please express your opinion on this, but without threats or personal attacks. Thank you. Hardouin 15:56, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just passing by, like 16 years later... but... and with all do respect, you're very wrong about Portugal, and you're making several confusions. Yes, there are cities in the country. The ideia that Lisbon is not a city is, i'm sorry, just absurd, considering that in the 12th century royal documents called it a "civitatem". And Coimbra, a "civitatis", and so on. First of all, one should understand when the country was around in the 12th century, cities began to be the main place of one diocese, the seat of the bishopric, with its several parishes ("Freguesias"). These are the very first "Portuguese" cities", type of cities that wen can call "historical", or "head of a diocese".

Now, lets not make a confusion here. A city is not only where the bishop administrates a particular diocese, it's also a prestigious location, and later would be an official municipality, by royal chart, that bestowed to that particular place its internal organization (political, economic, civil life, privileges, laws, etc). I'm not going to talk about the long history of Portuguese municipalities. Now with time, other places were granted the rank of cities, like every other place could also be granted the second level of vila (town, i presume).

Like for example, Funchal, in Madeira, that by royal chart in August of 1508 the town was granted the top level of a city (cidade) - and quoting with bad fast translation and adapting its main text - "we hope with the help of Our Lord that the aforementioned town, that has grown and has many knights and nobles and with good service of their residents and commerce and bla bla bla by my (own) good will we (the King) by this letter from now on we made it a city and should have all the insignia and privileges, freedoms and bla bla bla of every other city of our kingdoms as long as they follow and respect this and that". This are what we can call a city by a decree. All this type of cities in Portugal, throughout history, has an official published text, either royal or later from 19th century on by government decree. Some cities have asked to the executive to be ranked as city or town, others like Funchal were recognized as you can see by royal decision.

It's true that in several different eras the municipalities were organized in different ways. By the 19th century, the Church organization of places was secularized, so freguesias (parishes) were civil parishes, within one particular municipality. This was the political, administrative organization of places. Districts were more about historical regions, and as we speak they have little to no interest. However, places themselves didn't lose their status of city or town, as you can see in the official flags of the municipalities.

What you have said in 2005 about the civil governors it was simply not true. They didn't have any true powers in each municipality, they used to run powers like police forces and that kind of administration in a different level. They were exctint few years later, because they lack any real meaning.

About Lisbon there is no blurry situation whatsoever. You're just making a lot of confusions, sorry. It's quite clear, actually. The municipality of Lisbon had an elected mayor in 2005, like today, or like in 1976. Mayors in Portugal are elected to run one municipality. Nothing more, nothing less. This is running for several decades. In Lisbon, like in every single municipality in Portugal, there are elected presidents of parishes with their own assemblies, an elected mayor, and an elected Parliament with deputees. ALL presidents of each parish, are also elected to each Municipal Parliament.

Now, the city of Lisbon didn't have official boundaries in the middle ages, but by reading the royal charts, the city was implied to be inside walls. With time, more walls were built as the city grew outside its walls, and with more time, charts defined the boundaries of each parish, especially from the late 17th century on. With modernity, decrees defined what parishes defined the city.

So, in conclusion, the limits of the city of Lisbon are very clear defined, like in other cities, and they correspond entirely to the municipality of Lisbon. The city of Lisbon is BOTH an honorific and an administrative unit. And like i said about Funchal, a city was granted few official privileges too. The administration could run alongside clear defined privileges by the actual urban rank of one place. Just because one read things here and there, that alone does not define what is the reality in one country. So there are half a million residents as we speak in the city of Lisbon. Clear as water. At this level, Portugal is well organized. Not our fault that foreigners don't understand it. Sorry for the bad English here and there, too late to be writing this --Good Hope Phanta (talk) 02:15, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

A very erudite contribution Hardouin, which clearly shows that this list is meaningless - it's impossible to compare things properly without clear definitions of what you're comparing and as the countries in the EU have different definitions of "cities" (as you have amply demonstrated) the task is impossible.--62.140.211.130 13:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems deeply wrong to me to compare French urban communities with something like Greater London. The former are just intercommunal organizations with no real authority. Greater London may not exactly be a city, but it's more like a city than it is like a French urban community. 150.250.188.180 (talk) 15:54, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Cities vs. metropolitan areas

Hardouin claims to have a great deal of knlowledge of demography yet fails to distinguish some major differences bewteen cities/towns and metropolitan areas. Hardouin doesn't realize that sometimes "less is more". I guess that's the way people in France work. In fact, the French concepts Hardouin uses are in no way, applied by a large majority of the World's statistical agencies.

NOW with regards to the list and Harouin's observations.

a:) the link provided by Hardouin from Insee is incomplete because it gives only partial information about the French cities as of 2003. It is BY NO MEANS a CENSUS ESTIMATE. As Hardouin might have realized it is based on a survey based on a really small percentage of the population ( 8 % ) and in itself claims to be inaccurate by at least 500 people. Also it gives imprecise information with regards to the total population of the city. That Insee survey is there to show the population city tends and not a census estimate. I believe it's not too hard to distinguish between a Census Estimate and a temporary, imprecise data with regards to the population of the cities. Hardouin, understand that this page deals with precise CENSUS ESTIMATES as such, not just showing the city trends with regards to its population as this INSEE publication does. If you could find a precise statistics from Insee I would be more than welcome to put it in.

b:) The English updates on this page are inaccurate because, in fact, they include metropolitan areas City of Bradford Metropolitan District and not the city of Bradford itself and/or the Largest Settlement of the City of Bradford Metropolital District. The same applies to Leeds and to other cities who had a major increase of their population onm the UK figures list. Furthermore, the same also applies to Leeds which is a city that is included in the Metropolitan Borough of the City of Leeds. I'd like to focus your attention of the fact that the "Metropolitan Borough of the city of Leeds" has no city rights, it is in fact a borough, while the city of Leeds does. I do believe London is a complicated case and maybe it should be divided into boroughs, yet against it are the facts that a:) London has a mayor for all of the metropolitan area, b:) no borough has the status of a city except for Westminster and the city of London "The Square Mile", c:) the residence of the Queen and parliament are actually located in Westmister yet London still claims to be a capital of the United Kingdom. d:) The Lord major of the city of London (square mile) has only ceremonial functions therefore it shows the ceremonial status of the entity, 2:) The mayor of London is yes, A MAYOR, an does not resided in either borough of the "City of London" (The Square Mile) or in Westminster.

c:) With regards to Belgium it's as clear as it gets. All the cities within the Brussels Capital Region have a status of a municipality including the city of Brussels itself as well as places like Ukkel, Anderlecht etc. The metropolitan area for Brussels can be included in Hardouin's western european "urban areas" list.

d:) Hardouin is totally confused with Poland and I mean totally. Hardouin, for your knowledge I have lived in Warsaw for 5 years and speak Polish. None of the Warsaw boroughs have ever had a status of a city or municipality except for Wesola (which was a separate city before 2001 and was never part of Warsaw before since Warsaw was created). The word gmina that Hardouin claims he knows the knowledge of is not equivalent of the French word "commune". I will say that in French because Hardouin fails to understand the simple English. Le mot "gmina" n'equivaut pas a une commune en France et aucun des gmina urbains de Varsovie n'a jamais ete une ville ou municipalite separee" The boroughs of Warsaw had a status of an urban gmina between 1990 and 1999 but by no means no urban gmina had a status of a separate town/city or municipality, neither on paper nor in practice. Gmina is in fact a subdivision of a powiat. Furthermore, Warsaw got rid of that system in 1999 and now each of its 18 subdivisions is called a dzielnica (borough) Another issue is a powiat. Hardouin fails to understand that powiat is a regional subdivision of a voivodship and that in fact, each of the 16 voivoships is divided into powiats. Some (larger) municipalities have a status of a "miejski powiat"(town powiat) and some don't. Those that do, include ALL and I repeat ALL the city limits within the miejski powiat. There is absolutely no exception to that in all of Poland. Furthermore, for his knowledge, miejski powiat and a rural powiat, for example that of Wroclaw, have 2 completly different powiat local governments. It's not that difficult to understand and in my minds seems clear-cut.

e:) Hardouin should know that Serbia & Montenegro and Croatia are not scheduled to enter the E.U. at this time and in fact only Croatia started any negociations. The only countries that are scheduled to enter it are currently Romania and Bulgaria. Furthemore, Hardouin managed to put that information back on the list yet failed to correct it in any way, for exemple he left Belgrade with a very imprecise number of 1.700 000 inhabitants (that's a very old data). Hardouin claims having a good demographic knowledge yet fails to understand its basic concepts, his knowledge is reflected well in not correcting the erroneous yet very obvious Belgrade data.

f:) I currently work at Statistics Canada and indeed the "urban zone" concept is a french concept and is not commonly used throughout the European Union. The so called list of "urban zones" Hardouin created and recently updated fails to include urban areas such as Tricity with over one million habitants. Please, Hardouin, correct your "urban zone" list because it leaves a lot to be desired. It also surprisingly divides the Ruhr Area into two?!? Sounds bizarre? I would say, very!

g:) The goal of this very list is to present PRECISE city/town/municipality CENSUS or CENSUS ESTIMATES, I repeat "census" or "census estimates" not any imprecise info with regards to the city population. If Hardouin will manage to find the precise French info, not based on an small percentage sampling ( 8 % ) and that does not say it may be wrong by more or less 500 people. I will be more than keen to include it.

h:) I, for once, am a believer in a concept that "Less is more" and managed to put up a perfect and a very comprehensive list to the public. It does deal with complicated issues in an uncomplicated manner. I do not believe that this list should have bureaucracy-like explanations. It has to be clear-cut and precise. I guess in France, bureaucracy is what makes things go around. :)

VicFromTheBlock 19:57, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VicFromTheBlock, your answer is so crazy I feel a bit bewildered... First of all, will you please stop refering to French this, and French that. I am not even French myself for God's sake! I am English!! And yes, I lived in France for many years, like many English people do these days. So I find your nasty comments ludicrous.

Number two, there are so many erroneous things in what you say. I did not add Serbian or Croatian cities for one!! Someone else did, but not me. As for Belgrade, well, I am not in charge of verifying any single data in this list. I only correct things that I know, not things that I don't.

Number three, the concept of urban areas is not a French concept at all !! Here in England the UK National Statistics computes "urban areas", and officially so, and they have done it for a long time, maybe before even the French. In France they compute so called "unités urbaines", in other countries they have other names. Urban areas are well recognized all across Europe. Metropolitan area are not, not yet.

Number four, Tricity is indeed included in the list of urban areas of the European Union. Double-check. It's listed under Gdansk.

Number five, a lot of your data here are only very rough estimates, and not census estimates, for example Spanish or Italian data, or even English data. Since the last censuses in these countries, the estimates for following years are calculated only with small samples, exactly like in France. So either you delete all, or you leave all. You choose. Furthermore, France conducted its last census in 1999. There will be no more censuses after 1999. From 1999 on, the figures officially given by INSEE for big cities will only be estimates based on samples of population, so in your strange vision of reality, French cities will for ever keep their 1999 census figures. Now that's interesting!

Number six, the meropolitan borough of the City of Leeds DOES HAVE city rights. You should double-check your facts before making peremptory statements. I suggest you visit their website. The metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds is headed by a mayor, and behaves like a a city. There is no such thing as a "City of Leeds" existing inside the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds. The metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds has 715,200 inhabitants. I don't know how you got your figures of 443,247 inhabitants for the City of Leeds. Probably by grouping some wards at the center of the borough, but then that's total nonsense. If you're not convinced, send an email to the City of Leeds, and ask them.

Number seven, you seem to believe that this article is YOUR article, and that anyone foolish enough to dare change something deserves eternal damnation. On Wikipedia, articles are nobody's property, and they can be edited over and over. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. Hardouin 22:27, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Out of Polish metropolitan areas, 2 are indeed polycentric. There is clearly no such a thing as Gdansk urban area. The urban is called Tricity and consists from 3 main cities and other urban areas. Certainly Gdansk is not the only center for this area. The same very applies to Upper Silesian Metropolitan Area that resambles Ruhr: tens of the cities and Katowice as the city with population of about 10% total doesn't earn the name for the area, especially that nobody even or ever called it this way. One may even consider including Krakow into it, as many people travel to work between those areas, now well connected via A4 highway. Cautious 01:19, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

British Cities

The article states that the list "deals exclusively with cities and towns as opposed to the metropolitan areas", yet none of the population figures for the cities listed in Great Britain correspond to the census department figures for the population within the city limits. The four Yorkshire cities include areas outside to main settlement (which would generally thought of as a "city"), but contrary to what was stated above all four are considered cities by the British government.

London!!!!!!!!

This list is pointless without including London. Would you only count Manhattan as New York City? Better to change the criteria to make it useful rather than maintain a pointless list. The city mayors list looks reasonable. http://www.citymayors.com/features/euro_cities1.html

According to the definition of city used for this list, wouldn't the capital of the UK be Westminster rather than London? Afterall, Downing Street, Parliament and Buckingham Palace are not in the 'City of London'.

This is a joke. The City of London is not London. Every other list I have ever seen treats Greater London as London. Greater London is a city not an urban area or a metro - they are both larger. Merchbow 06:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

London is not a city as it has not been granted a charter by the queen. It is in fact a region. 86.130.141.103 21:25, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

London is screamingly obvious the largest city in the EU. The list should be corrected! Stern 01:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Go London !!! Don't be sad London, you're the greatest in my opinion. Just ignore these evil wikipedians :)

If you include Greater London metropolitan area, then Paris is even bigger with over 12 millions inhabitants (and still growing): about 1/5 of total population in metropolitan France live then in Paris area (this area completely covers The city/department of Paris, the "petite ceinture" all around it without any interruption or exception (3 departments, subdivided in municipalities, but you won't even see any delimitation there's no road indicator most of the time, and you need to look at street plates), and most of the area of the other departments of Île-de-France (however Île-de-France still has some rural areas, spread with population and constructions everywhere).

This area is highly urbanized, with the exception of protected parks and some modest forests completely enclosed in the urban area. France is certainly the country that is the most centralized in Europe with Paris dominating the rest of the country, with just Marseille, Lyon (and in lower measure Lille) having significant independant development (Nantes is also growing faster, but is still far). The Paris urban area is still growing towards Normandy on the North-West, and to the North into Picardie.

To stop this centralism which is harmful to France, many plans have been done, but the most successful to limit this growth, pumping other regions, has been the development of transports, notably the TGV which now connects Paris to most other major regional metropolitan areas, so that it is often faster to reach these cities from Paris, than to commute within the metropolitan area of Paris (for example it's faster to join Nantes with TGV from Paris, than to join the airport of Charles de Gaule from most parts of the Parisian conurbation). The second factor was also the development of urban and periurban transport (including regional commuting, metros/tramways, and densification of bus services) in those regional cities notably since 1980's. This has had a very significant impact in the price of housing in those regions, paving the way for the multiplication of development poles (even though Paris is still growing fast, other regions are now growing again in terms of population)

Thanks to the highest birth rate in EU, where other countries (including newcomers) are now or will soon be declining due to their insufficient birth rate per woman ; only Ireland and France have a birth rate of 2 children per woman, but France has the longest life duration expectancy, and also has a high immigration rate, including from other EU countries and notably from UK.

France was the most populated country in Europe for many centuries (until 19th century), but it will soon pass over Germany in terms of population between 2030 (if Germany does not reverse its low birth rate). France has already passed over UK which is declining (and no sign that it will reverse the curve). This will be facilitated by the many regional development opportunities offered now outside Paris (and the good quality of public and commercial facilities thoughout the territory, including in rural areas for telecommunications), but this won't stop Paris' growth (and London's decline) before soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verdy P (talk • contribs) 05:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Greater London isn't London's metropolitan area, it is just an out of date arbitrary boundary. Even the narrowest definition of the metro area extends well beyond the boundaries of Greater London. If you think London is declining, you must be using a very out of date text book. It started to grow again in the mid 1980s and is currently growing at over 1% per annum. The UK's population is not declining, it is growing, and it is also quite likely to overtake that of Germany. But in a global future dominated by China, India, and the USA, all European countries will seem small, even Russia. Postlebury (talk) 00:30, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

You might want to look at http://www.citymayors.com/features/euro_cities1.html for a list of largest European cities that uses the "population figures for cities with legally defined boundaries, with recognised urban status and with its own local government". It includes countries out side the EU but it's easy enough to pick out the ones that are in.

ANYONE WHO LIVES IN LONDON, CONSIDERS GREATER LONDON TO BE APART OF LONDON!!!!

Unlike in many continental European countries with civil law traditions, there is less codification of many matters in the UK. Because Greater London is a "region" of England doesn't necessarily exclude Greater London from being a homogenous city concurrently. To take up the argument of "city status" in the UK: there is a tradition in the UK of only conferring the title "city" on a local government division where the local government council for that area has been awarded a Royal Charter conferring city status upon it. However, if we were to infer this meaning on the word "city" in the title of this article then all of the largest cities in the EU would be in the UK, as no other towns in the EU, outside of the UK, have received such Royal Charters from the British crown. Therefore it cannot be the case that the word "city" as used by this article can be defined so narrowly as only, in the case of UK cities, to refer to areas with Royal Charters. Like must be compared with like !. Looking, for instance, at the Wikipedia article for city and cross referencing what we can learn there with the article for city limits a more sensible interpretation for this article is that "city limit" means an area commonly referred to as a "city" defined within the government defined boundary for such city. London is commonly understood to be both a city and to refer to Greater London (indeed, all of the government sub-divisions of London are titled "London Borough of..." - except the City of London which itself is termed as such so as to distinguish the City from London as a whole - the inference being that "London" is not "the City" but "Greater London"), and therefore London should be in this list as a city in its own right where London's city limits are defined to be the government boundary for the London region of England. A wordy but I hope a conclusive argument.--jrleighton 07:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

This would be all well and good if a consistent definition of "city" was used throughout wikipedia. Unfortunately, Manchester is defined as a local authority of 400,000 people (ridiculous to anyone who has ever been there), whereas London is allowed to incorporate the surrounding boroughs. 86.130.142.4 21:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• In Portugal there are really cities, just some cities correspond to the entire municipality or just to a parish or a group of parishes within a municipality. The problem is far more complex in metro areas. Most people in municipalities around Lisbon or Porto consider themselves part of those cities (this way of belonging is not in all the metro region, but mostly in core municipalities that would classify as a city, Both Portuguese cities have in fact about 1 million inhabitants each, and these areas are administrated by a president of a metropolitan area. Even in my city we have that problem, our next city is nothing more than a district. This article really compares pears and apples and you even putted the municipality of Gaia in here, which is not a single city, but a municipality. this is really very complex. But the article as it is his wrong. --Pedro 16:07, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

This should really be corrected, less than two thirds of the municipality belong to the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, aprox. 200,000 people. There are municipalities in Portugal containing three and four cities, as there are also municipalities with none. The second biggest city in Portugal is Porto, with roughly 250,000 people within its boundaries --Antonio 3:30, 17 June 2007 (GMT)

What's a city anyway

Everyone: The concept of "city" and its distinction from "town" is specific to the English speaking world. It doesn't apply in many other countries. We need a more abstract definition.

I suggest something like "administrative unit which functions equivalent to a municipality or commune". It should have a an elected mayor, and it should be distinguished from boroughs or other administrative subdivisions which are on a lower level than municipalities. It should also be distinguished from concepts such as "region" or "metropolitan area".

I think in most cases these distinctions are clear. In the case of London, my impression is that the "City of London" is nowadays really equivalent to a borough, and that the administrative unit is now "Greater London" (which has a mayor, does it not?). Regards Anorak2 09:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

But for most purposes the boroughs are still the administrative divisions, doing what unitary authorities do elsewhere in the UK. The GLA is somewhat analogous to what's planned for the (other) English regions (which are clearly not cities in any sense), though those seem to be something of a non-starter at this point. It's not clear to me that London/the GLA is "equivalent to a municipality"; certainly it's not "the smallest administrative subdivision to have its own democratically elected representative leadership". It's also a little counter-intuitive to argue that Greater London was a city from 1965 to 1986, and from 2000 to present, but wasn't in the intervening 14 years. Cities for the purposes of this list clearly have to have some basis in officially defined boundaries, but I'd question trying to legislate too strongly against common sense in determining which of the various possible boundaries to use, when there are several. Alai 18:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

There are hardly any elected mayors in the UK, not so long ago there weren't any at all, so that idea is no use for the purposes of this article. Postlebury (talk) 00:34, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I indeed live in Manchester, and the population is just over 400,000. It's the way that all the surrounding towns and the City of Salford are all seemlessly joined onto manchester that makes it feel much bigger. If you travel by road, it is clearly stated when you're leaving Manchester and entering another area in Greater Manchester. It is different to the London / Greater London senario. As the confusion over what counts at city and borough there is down to how the Romans founded the city - ie it was founded as 2 cities - London and City. Both of which have been swalled up, and no-one has bothered to update the status of the region. Greater London should clearly be made a city in its own right to avoid all this confusion. JL

I too live in Manchester and the city population is now over 500,000...We are no different to London these days, especiallly since the inception of The GREATER MANCHESTER COMBINED AUTHORITY...Within London there are signs saying you are now entering Lambeth from say Wandsworth....... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.30.233.220 (talk) 21:36, 25 January 2013 (UTC) By the way we have TWO CITIES and EIGHT METROPOLITAN BOROUGHS in Greater Manchester...NOT TOWNS..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.30.233.220 (talk) 21:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Leeds

How can Leeds be both 26th AND 59th? As 59th is from the 2001 census I think the entry at no. 26 should be removed. Robertsteadman 17:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

...how do I do it without mucking up the numbering?! Robertsteadman 17:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

The two Leeds entries are so wildly different - it a joke. Surely estimates shouldn't be used at all - just verifiable facts? Robertsteadman 19:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess that one is of the administrative unit Leeds and one is of the greater urban region of Leeds. Not usre though but it would explain the great differrnce. This kind of entries on this list make it useless. Jeltz talk 20:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - it should be census stats only. Robertsteadman 06:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The official population of Leeds (by census stats) is 715404 (in 2001), making it England's 3rd largest city. Thus it should be 26th not 59th. This population figure is from the UK government's official census site: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pop2001/Leeds.asp The reason for the confusion lies in the way Leeds as a city was formed, combining Leeds Proper, Wetherby, Pudsey & Ottley to form the City of Leeds. Leeds proper has a population of around 400,000. JL

Has the list been changed since these comments were made? Leeds has a population of around 480,000 living within the 'city' itself. Leeds' official city boundary though, which takes in the likes of Wetherby to the north and Garforth to the east, has a population of around 720,000 and is growing rapidly as more and more financial institutions relocate to Leeds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.125.72.150 (talk) 08:47, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Sheffield

Sheffiled is 46th AND 60th??!! Robertsteadman 18:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Nottingham

The City of Nottingham has 270,000 but Greater Nottingham, the immediate conurbastion, an additional 613,723 people. As the figure for London clearly uses Greater London shouldn't this apply to all entries? Robertsteadman 18:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Then the list has to be recreated from scratch since I suspect that none of the cities except from some from the UK use Greater X as definition of the city limits. Jeltz talk 20:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes - it seems to me the current list is a nonsense. Robertsteadman 06:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The only UK city using "Greater X" as definition of city limits in this list is Lndon. NON OF THE OTHERS ARE USING THEIR "GREATER X". London, or Greater London is different from all the other UK cities and thus is treated as such. Just because it uses the word greater, don't confuse it with say Greater Manchester or Greater Nottingham. The official population of London by the UK government's official census is well over 7 million. All this confusion lies with fact the Queen needs to official make Greater London a city in its own right, as the population outgrew its square mile Roman limits about 2000 years ago!

Errrrr....sorry Robert, but there is no such officially recognised thing as "Greater Nottingham" you are correct, but "Greater Manchester" is a ceremonial county, was a county council from 1974 (until abolished by Margaret Thatcher's Government) and a WIDELY used and known of use of the word "Greater X" - the ONLY other one in the UK apart from "Greater" London.--Mapmark (talk) 09:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Revamping the list

This is the list of largest EU cities according to World Gazetteer. For the most part, it uses the concept of an "urban locality" to define a city. This means that if there is an official "supermunicipality" definition, such as Greater London or the Brussels Capital Region, it uses that figure. It uses towns/municipalities otherwise. World Gazetteer is a well regarded resource, if you agree with its definitions of cities. What do people think of revamping the current list with this one? It makes it easier to maintain the list since we only have to look at one source. Polaron 15:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The current list is a mishmash and needs to be corrected - double entires, different definitions, unofficial figures.... World Gazateer List looks good. Robertsteadman 15:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

In case of Brussels, every city within the Brussels Capital Region has a status of a separate city and is therefore a separate entity. Futhermore, the Belgian Constitutions specifies that the actual capital of Belgium is the city of Brussels only and not any other entity within the Brussels Capital Region.

only 99 countries not 100

what is no.100 please add to list as top 100 list is incomplete without it

Leicester

Should Leicester not make the top 100? According to the Leicester article it has 285,100 inhabitants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester#Politics Thats slips it in just below Bradford I think. -- Jimmmmmmmmm 15:40 30 June 2006

Ooops, wrong link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester -- Jimmmmmmmmm 15:45 30 June 2006

And according to this it should be even higher up the list.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_cities_by_population

Jimmmmmmmmm 16:06 30 June 2006

Is nothing going to be done about this massive error? 194.72.81.141 (talk) 09:55, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Cardiff

Which muppet put all the UK cities except Cardiff as "City, United Kingdom", with the Union Flag, except Cardiff which is down as being in Wales with the old Draig Goch flying proudly beside it. Make your minds up and be consistent: British cities should all either be labelled as being in the UK, with the flag to match, or in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, with flags changed accordingly. It's this kind of amateurishness and lack of attention to detail that makes Wikipedia such a joke sometimes. Alan Kyder 86.136.2.158 16:26, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

82.3.19.169 did. I have changed it back now. Things can slip through here as not every change is always scrutinized in every detail. -- TimSE 16:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Leeds

If the article is referring to the population within the 'City Boundaries', as in the district of which is governed by its namesake, then Leeds does not have 443,000 people. There are, of 2005 at least, approximately 715,000 living within the boundaries of the 'City of Leeds' district (this being the only know boundary with the name Leeds). The 443,000 in question actually refers to the Centralised Urban area based on the 'old' or 'original' City Borough of Leeds, which merged with surrounding settlements to create the modern 'City of Leeds'. dj_paul84 16:50pm, 25 August 2006

Yes. Same with the figure for Bradford, which is not the 'city limits' figure of ~400,000. Morwen - Talk 11:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, the City of Wakefield and the City of Sunderland are missing. Morwen - Talk 11:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The Leeds problem is still present. It should be the 400,000 figure. That's the city size rather than metropolitan size. Also the City of Wakefield is an administrative area. Wakefield itself is about 80,000. Would someone mind changing the article to reflect this? Thanks. Welshleprechaun (talk) 18:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Metropolitan areas - Athens

The way you present the population data, is absurd. For example, you include London boroughs (similar to municipalities in Athens) but for Athens, you include only the data for Municipality of Athens, practically Athens' center. The real figure is much higher, 5 times or more!!!

Notable Cities outside of EU

Since this table covers only the European Union, cities in non-member countries are omitted, such as Moscow, Oslo, Reykjavík, Bern and Zürich.

Why would cities like Bern and Reykjavik be mentioned if their populations wouldn't allow them to be included on the list if Switzerland and Iceland were a part of the EU? Maestro tomas 22:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe Bern could be removed as not only is it too small but Zürich already represents Switzerland in this listing. Reykjavík could be replaced by a larger European capital from a non-EU state, perhaps Kiev. --Kisseveryscar 20:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

UK Cities

I already mentioned this before but seeing that the article 'Still' has not been corrected yet I thought it worth to mention agian. This is the title of the article is it not: Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits. So why is the population of Leeds still just over 400,000? If it wants the population which reside within the City Limits then the population is 723,100. I know if I correct the article it will be changed back again. Also another rant, not really pertaining to this article but about City status in the UK, I think its ridiculous!! Other countries define Cities as simply large Urban areas that form one singular entity (though with some degree of separation from other large urban areas to distinguish them i.e. rural areas and or urban areas more than 200 metres apart). Australia count Sydney as having over 4 million people but the actual district called the City of Sydney has around 122,221!!! It is apparent that what would be described as a Metro-area in the UK is counted as City there and also in the US. I think we should re-condsider the way in which Cities are defined in UK law and that we shoul have a list of UK cities that look like this:

Year 2005 (based on Urban Areas in the UK within 200 metres)

• London - 7,517,700 (or possibly include all of its urban area; 8.5 million)
• Birmingham - 2,284,093 (all of West Midlands conurbation not county)
• Manchester - 2,240,230 (Greater Manchester conurbation not county)
• Glasgow - 1,749,154
• Liverpool - 1,119,000
• Newcastle - 811,500*
• Leeds - 723,100*
• Nottingham - 667,000 (local definition of Greater Nottingham)
• Sheffield - 637,931*

(*note that the population for Newcastle and Leeds does not encompass the official definition of either their urban areas nor their Metropolitan counties. Newcastle uses the population from the Tyneside conurbation excluding Sunderland, and Leeds uses the City of Leeds population figure. Sunderland for Tyne & wear and Bradford for West Yorkshire are too far apart in terms of the urban rule to be counted as the same urban entity. Leeds includes it whole district as even the ares not defined as its urban core are still well within its urban locality, in that it is within 200 metres). Sheffield has no real conurbation so the figure above is merely the population of Sheffield plus the urban sub-area of Rotherham)

The list is based on the largest UK core cities (over 500,000) which have a wider urban area/conurbation, NOT all UK conurbations & core cities, otherwise everywhere would be a City. Its basically what I count Cities as from an Urban point of view like the US rather than a District with a City Charter as in the UK. dj_paul84 18:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Leeds Amendment

I have decided to correct the Leeds statistic and place it in its correct position in the list. The official link shows the official population of Leeds, within its City limits, from the offical 2001 census. I cant stress how 'official' it is:D dj_paul84 11:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

this article

is it me, or is this article, which combines population figures from various different sources to make a composite list, verging, if not thoroughly, on Wikipedia:Original research? Morwen - Talk 16:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It's a joke of an article anyway and serves no purpose. Elysium 73 22:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I've added a tag. 81.179.239.42 16:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Cities between 250,000 - 300,000 in EU

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Rank	City and country	Population	Date of census/estimate
100.	Galaţi, Romania	298,941	July 1 2004 (official)
101.	Białystok, Poland	294,864	July 1 2004
102.	Gdynia, Poland	252,791	January 1 2004 (official)

Dubious

Explanation of dubious tag (identical to edit summary): (298000-222000)/7000*4 = 43 years, so this is dubious Ufwuct 20:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Brussels

The problem is that in this article, the population is given of the City of Brussels, which itself has a small population, similar to the City of London, which is quite small. However, when London is considered in this article, it included all of London (including its boroughs) which to me is accurate, however when Brussels was considered, the municipalities that make of what is considered Brussels are not.

To help illustrate the issue:

• City of London (roughly 10,000 residents)
• City of Brussels (roughly 140,000 residents)

However in this article, Greater London's figures were given (which includes all its boroughs). Though the 19 municipalities of Brussels WERE NOT included. That is why I feel there is a major issue here.

Also, I'm not advocating including the 'metropolitan' areas, which in London's case would soar to 12 million or more, and in the case of Brussels well over 2 million.

Therefore it should be:

Rank	City and country	Population	Date of census/estimate
16.	Brussels, Belgium	1,018,804	February 28 2007 (official)

Nja247 (talk • contribs) 10:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I noticed it too. This is a problem. You know there is a List_of_cities_in_Belgium? Population Brussels = 176,545. Same problem. I live in Brussels and I think we have to put the population of the "Brussels Capital Region" = 1,191,604. And I think we have to follow the wikipedia principle "be bold" and I'm going to put that number. :) SvenAERTS (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I also changed the template so it is now autonumbering :) SvenAERTS (talk) 03:06, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

This was already discussed before. There is a clear difference between the city and the metropolitan area. It would also cause inconsistency with other city lists, for example that one you cited.

Autonumbering is not appropriate for this table. It prevents the Rank from being ranked along with the other columns and from being quickly reset. FromCzech (talk) 06:15, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

You are comparing the City of London, which has a population of about 10,000, with the city of London, which has a population of 8.8 million. The City of London is a borough within London which has some aspects of its historical government.

AsimovtheCat (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Things have been solved by the making more lists so people can see the differences. They are in the "See also section":

• List of cities in Europe by population within city limits
• List of metropolitan areas in Europe
• List of largest cities in the European Union by population within city limits
• List of urban areas in the European Union
• List of larger urban zones (metropolitan area)
• List of cities in Europe by country
• List of European cities proper by population density
• List of European city regions
• World's largest cities SvenAERTS (talk) 08:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

This list is completely useless

This list cannot be used for anything at all. It is completely useless and it should be deleted. The way city municipalities are arranged in the various cities are totally incomparable. Birmingham bigger than Athens? I dont think so. --Rasmus81 02:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, Rotterdam should be included, it's the 2nd biggest city of the Netherlands (after Amsterdam and before The Hague) with around 488k people and it's not even being mentioned.

I agree that "within city limits" is kind of useless. It's interesting, but doesn't really prove anything. The London example above is good; the City of London itself is absolutely tiny yet "London" is included.

Have you ever been to Birmingham it's a big city the Uk's 2nd biggest city just because it's not as well known as some other places doesn't mean it's not a big city. And why are other cities using the Metro population rather than city proper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.100.50.195 (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

IP 77.100.50.195 is perhaps right that Birmingham isn't a small city just because it's not a capital. But this is not what is debated here. The point is that city borders are administrative and could easely be changed over one night. According to this list London is 3-4 times as large as Paris. Imagine that the parisian politicians decide to merge municipalities in the approximity to central Paris. Then it could easely reach a population of 5-10 M. According to this list Helsinki is larger than Copenhagen. But a quick research reveal the facts that not even all the central parts of Copenhagen are included in the municipality (e.g Fredriksberg), while a great part of Helsinki municipality is composed of various suburbs.

A list like this one is used in order to compare cities one with another. But the national city definitions aren't harmonized. This is why the list is useless. I think that the following lists are more substantial and relevant when comparing cities: Largest urban areas of the European Union, Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) in the European Union or possibly Largest European cities and metropolitan areas, but be aware that the latter includes also multicentric urban areas such as Rhine-Ruhr (where Cologne is the largest urban center). This doesn't make Cologne larger than Paris or Copenhagen (in Copenhagen-Malmö-metropolitan area) larger than Stockholm for that matter. Nirro (talk) 17:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. This list is worthless due to the differing definitions of cities used in the different nations of Europe. I think the largest urban areas list is by far the more relevant and meaningful article. You can only compare like for like which isn't the case throughout europe!--Gytrash (talk) 18:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Sofia

Someone has put new data about Sofia's population which is not conform to the source. I will put back what the official statistics of the NSI of Bulgaria say as they are used as reference for the others Bulgarian cities on the list. If someone thinks that municipalities web sites are more credible source than the NSI, we should apply this change to the three Bulgarian cities here, which would probably change the order in the list. --SOMNIVM 15:26, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Sofia have around 1.1 million people and maybe 1.8 in metro area. Someone must correct these mistakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.116.162.60 (talk) 08:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I changed Sofia population to one from the source quoted.89.79.13.213 (talk) 21:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Pictures - UK cities

The UK has pictures from two cities, which seems reasonable due to the population. The cities shown are London and Birmingham. Since Glasgow is listed as a gamma global city should we not have a picture of Glasgow rather than Birmingham here? -- Q Chris 09:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham is the UK's second city Glasgow is not and Birmingham is a bigger city than Glasgow. Glasgow is not a Gamma world city and is also well below Birmingham on the Global City scale check this out Global city

Alpha, beta, gamma?

Frankfurt and Milan are alpha cities (along with London), Berlin is a gamma city? Seemingly, the authors have neither been to Frankfurt and Milan (nice and rich cities, but without any atmosphere of global importance) nor to Berlin (one of the most interesting cities I've ever been to and which feels as urban as a city can feel). Berlin gamma, Frankfurt alpha. Very strange. Apparently, the population of a city is more significant than academic rankings based on curious criteria: London, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Paris are the largest and (in my opinion!) the most global and urban cities of the EU. 85.178.20.190 06:17, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It's true that Frankfurt has Germany's most important airport, most important stock exchange and many important businesses such as the main branches of all German banks, while Berlin does not. Thes facts go into the ranking. This alpha beta gamma stuff is based on the "global cities" ranking worked out by one specific university, and apparently they value such criteria very high. It's a "businessman's" ranking of the world. This is all legitimate, but there are many different such "city ranking" scales made by hundreds of different institutes often by very different criteria. I wonder why this single one is featured so prominently in wikipedia and even cited in a lot of separate articles. Anorak2 12:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 05:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

london

shouldnt london be shown with its flag like the other cities —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fifaworld07 (talk • contribs) 13:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

London has a flag? -- Q Chris (talk) 13:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

yes look it up in google images. it looks like the flag of england with a small sword in the top left cornerFW07 (talk) 17:46, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That is the flag of City of London, not entire London. 85.217.20.33 (talk) 15:41, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Badly sourced data

A lot of data here is badly sourced, with "official" links pointing to homepages of sites in foreign languages. I'm not planning on finding my way there, so I'm going to remove these links if no one has a better idea. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 09:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Two 80th places

Bilbao and Wuppertal are both at 80th place.Somebody,please change it and update the data of the population.GvmBG (talk) 09:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)GvmBG

Candidate countries

Is there any point really in having a section with cities in candidate countries? Why not wait until if and when these countries become members, and add the cities to the list then instead. By the way, the listed population figures for the Turkish cities are not for the cities actually, they are for the total population of district centres within their provinces (including the population of several separate cities).--Pjred (talk) 22:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I suggest they are removed. Garden. 19:48, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Reference dates

The best would probably be to list the exact reference dates and not just the years for the population figures. Population statistics for European cities are often updated on a half-year, quarterly or even monthly basis.--Pjred (talk) 12:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That would make sense, but the dates are missing for many of the censuses. It's either ambiguity or unreliability, and I'd go for the former. Garden. 13:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too much of a problem to track down dates that's eventually missing. Looking at the old version, where the dates were listed, the only city without an exact date was Lisbon (and I can update that figure if anyone wants, with reference and an exact reference date). My prediction is that it will be a mess when people will update from various sources, with various figures but for the same year.--Pjred (talk) 14:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

A lot of them need updating anyway - if you would be willing to help, please do! Thanks a lot! Garden. 15:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Correcting the introduction

"In many cases, the list of Largest urban areas of the European Union gives figures that better reflect common understanding of the different cities' sizes as the administrative borders of the cities in several European countries encompass only a small part of the cities' urban areas."

I, and many other commenters, have found that the list of Largest Urban Areas does not in fact reflect common understanding of different cities' sizes. I no of no-one, for example, who thinks that Paris is larger than London nor have I ever seen it referred to as such outside of wikipedia. It is not an official or standardised definition, simply an exercise done by a french university a few years back. I will delete this part of the section within a week unless someone provides a rationale for it and simply leave the information about larger urban zones, which is standardised, harmonised, and easily defined.59.38.32.5 (talk) 10:34, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Helsinki

Why Helsinki isn't in the list? 82.116.240.245 (talk) 12:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Because it is a small village? 82.252.225.79 (talk) 18:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know where you got that information from. Helsinki is on the list, at place 45. JIP | Talk 19:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Lack of consistency

The article suffers from a lack of consistency. It explicitly states that it deals with population within city limits yet immediately takes a different approach to London by including a much larger area than than just the City of London. While I agree that the population of City of London in no way matches the real population of London, this is hardly something unique. We have an exact match in Brussels, yet Brussels is not on the list and I have no doubts that the same applies to several other cities. We can deal with this is different ways, but not in the current way of having one approach for one city and another approach for another city. We can discuss different ways to improve the article and which approach to adopt, but in the meantime I'm changing the figure for London to match the situation for other cities, but I also add a paragraph to the start of the article to exlain why cities such as London and Brussels are not accurately presented.Jeppiz (talk) 19:20, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

A user included London and Brussels in the list without discussing the topic or explaining his/her reasoning. I welcome a discussion of it, but not unexplained changes. If we talk explicitly about city limits, I don't quite see how we can decide to ignore those city limits for cities and not for others. Brussels and London were just mentioned as two examples, so including both of them, rather than just one, still doesn't solve the problem here.Jeppiz (talk) 19:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's very silly to pretend that "the city limits of London" refers only to the City of London, which is really nothing more than a borough of London. Likewise for Brussels. The point of the "population within city limits" rule is to exclude areas in greater metropolitan areas (e.g. the London commuter belt or the Greater London Urban Area) that aren't part of the city administratively, such as Epsom or Staines. Think of it this way: if you asked someone who lives in the City of Westminster, "Do you live in London", he'd say yes; if you asked someone who lives in Epsom or Staines the same question, he'd say no. +Angr 07:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you, I also find it silly. But we would need to have proper definitions, not doing as had been done before on this list, putting all of London in and ignoring the issue for other cities.Jeppiz (talk) 17:42, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The "City of London" is essentially one part of London. It has city status, but it is similar to the many different boroughs in London. Westminster is technically the City of Westminster, but it is still a part of London. The same situation occurs in New York City, and all 5 boroughs count as part of the city limits. I don't live in London, but just as general questions, if you live in Westminster, do you pay taxes that are specific to London? are you not under the jurisdiction of the London Metropolitan Police Service? and isn't London the postal city of your mailing address? I believe this article needs to be changed back to how it was previously. London is London. It is not just the historic core of the "City of London". All of London should count as the city proper. Superflush (talk) 13:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is the role of the Mayor of London at the London Government's website [2]. The Mayor of London is responsible for all of London, not just the "City of London". As the Mayor of New York is responsible for all of New York City, not just Manhattan. Additionally, here is the FAQ on the London Government's website [3]; here they state that the City of London is the "the central business district" of London. Does this not give you any indication of how the structure of London is set up. We need to change this article back to how it was, counting all of London. Superflush (talk) 13:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

While I agree with much of what you say, the fundamental question remains: How is any of that different from other cities? If you live in Ixelles or Schaerbeek, you live as much in Brussels as you live in London if you live in Westminster. Ask anyone living in Montrouge or Gentilly where they live, and they'll tell you Paris. We could, and should, discuss definitions here, but I'm rather skeptic of the approach of "Keep London in and ignore the rest!" that some users seem to advocate.Jeppiz (talk) 14:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the test is where people would say they are from if they are from a suburb. Rather, I think the test if how the local government treats the city. I feel that the "City of London" is kept that way for historic reasons, and that the current city is an expanded city, and simply called London. I think the test would be to inquire with the government about how it is considered. From everything I read on the government's website, it makes me believe that London is the whole London and that the governmental agencies cover all of London. Similar to New York City being all five boroughs and not just Manhattan. Superflush (talk) 20:25, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say. Although not an expert on London, that is also my understanding. The same thing definitely applies for Brussels as well. So for London and Brussels, I know that the definition is problematic and not correctly represented in this article. I believe there are other cities for which the same thing applies, even though I'm not aware of it. However, it would not be correct to change the definition based just on how we feel. If you ask me for my personal opinion, this list could just as well be deleted. Wikipedia has countless of lists for the largest cities in the EU already, and I must say that this list is the most problematic and the least useful. Needless to say, both London and Brussels are found where they should be on the other lists. Perhaps we should just redirect this article to one of the similar lists that already exists?Jeppiz (talk) 20:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to build on my point above, Wikipedia already has the following lists on cities in the EU:

• Larger Urban Zones in the European Union
• Largest population centres in the European Union
• Largest urban areas of the European Union

Add to that the list Largest European cities and metropolitan areas, and one really starts to wonder about the need for so many articles.Jeppiz (talk) 20:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Well the Largest population centres in the European Union article has London's city proper at 7.5 million. So there definitely is some lack of consistency. Superflush (talk) 21:42, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

How can we have these crazy inconsistencies. The London article states the population of London as 7,556,900. Surely there can't be this one article that conflicts with everything else on Wikipedia. Superflush (talk) 21:45, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The Eurostat database for city populations [4] only has data up to 2004 but at least one can determine which definition Eurostat is using for the administrative city. The 2004 population of Brussels is listed as 999,899 while that of London is 7,429,200. By using the Eurostat concept, at least we don't have to make any judgment calls as to how to define the administrative city. --Polaron | Talk 22:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Polaron, that is a good idea. By using Eurostat, we solve the problem with London and Brussels and rid ourselves of the risk of only solving London and Brussels. I still think that this list could be merged with Largest population centres in the European Union, but using Eurostat is a convenient way out of the mess.Jeppiz (talk) 00:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

For France, data is not accurate. First, we have to understand the difference between Communes, Urban communities, Arrondissements. What we need here is data for Communes, which are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities/cities in the United States. Definitely, the guys from Eurostat did not understand it (and also that table misses some cities). Or, may be the interpretation from here is wrong. See: General presentation of city statistics collected in the Urban Audit. Also, what they say about Paris and London: "Finally, for Paris and London, a "kernel" was created in order to facilitate comparisons between these two big cities."
(Rgvis (talk) 21:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC))

For France we have this link, with official data: List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants (2006 census);
For England there is this list: List of English districts by population, but we have to take into consideration only entities defined as city.
Also, we have to pay attention to Eurostat table, as long as they use urban areas too which are not part of this article. One more thing about Eurostat, this is not an exhaustive study:
"All in all, 237 cities in the European Union (EU-25) and 21 cities from Bulgaria and Romania took part in the Urban Audit 2003/2004 project. There are cities that did not take part in this study (for Romania, these are: Iaşi, Constanţa, Galaţi, Braşov)"
And also there is data from 2006/2007:
"Eurostat revised the spatial units for the 2006/2007 collection of Urban Audit data. This involved agreeing with the Member States on 63 additional cities in the EU-27".
(Rgvis (talk) 10:08, 14 October 2009 (UTC))

Corrections:

Lyon: moved from 14 to 57 Eurostat has only "Urban Area" Data, useless for us, so only INSEE is our provider of data.

Marseille: the same, moved from 18 to 21 (anyway, Marseille is considered the second largest city in France);

Toulouse: no data from Eurostat, only from INSEE (437,715), moved from 35 to 64;

Nice: the same, 347,060 inhabitants, moved from 55 to 83;

Moved-out: Lille (the population of the city (INSEE) is 226,014); Bordeaux with 232,260 inhabitants for the city; Nantes: INSEE 282,853; Strasbourg: INSEE 272,975; Montpellier: 251,634; Toulon: 167,816; Grenoble: 156,107; Rouen: 107,904; Rennes: 209,613; Saint-Etienne: 177,480; Aix-en-Provence: INSEE 142,534;

For more informations see: List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants (2006 census).

For England (see: List of English districts by population), cities taken in consideration, only those which have this status (of city):
Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Wakefield, Coventry.

I also reintroduced cities not included in Eurostat: Mannheim, Coventry, Iaşi, Timişoara, Constanţa, Utrecht, cities with over 300,000 inhabitants.

(Rgvis (talk) 19:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC))

Copenhagen

In this table only the city of Copenhagen is presented - It's like The City of London (borough) has only about 5000 inhabitants. The danish capital consists of three parts Copenhagen, Frederiksberg (wich lies like an "island" all surrounded by Copenhagen municipallity) and Gentofte, the norhern part of the capital. Together they have about 760.000 inhabitants 2010 at a surface of 117 sq.km. London consists of more then City of London borough and Copenhagen consists of more then Copenhagen municipallity. But the reason for that just Copenhagen municipallity is used here is probablly that Denmark now have found that the inner urban city limits have grown to 1.35 million (and the metropolitan district 1.9 million at 2750 sq.km.)

For the record, the numbers for Copenhagen are not correct since it contains four different municipallies. The population is 640k in Copenhagen Municipality. Entropia42 18 jan 2022 CET 22:49

Paris and the Rhur-conglomerate

This is really silly, the table concists of the 20 central districts only. The whole city has today over 10 million inhabitants (urban area) and 14 million with suburbs (metropolitan area). Since different countries have different rules this kind of list is not encyclopedical. You can't copare apples with strawberries - the rules must be fare and alike. Otherwise this list fills no function. And where is the Ruhr district ? An conglomerat of cities build together and has - acourding to how You count 6.7 million , 10 million or 13-14 milion people. The 6.7 concists of for instance Dortmund, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg and Düsseldorf as it's biggest buuilt-together-cities. In the larger figures includes as examples also Wupperthal, Mönchengladbach, Cologne and Bonn. AviatorPontus (talk) 11:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Berlin

The latest available figure for the population of Berlin is 3,340,441 inhabitants as of 31 March 2010 [5]. Could somebody please update the information, as I do not know how to do this properly. --Berlin 11011 (talk) 14:56, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

"City limits"

Frankly, I immediately went to this discussion page, because I always learned that Paris had 10 million inhabitants. On the other hand, a proud citizen of Birmingham once told me that this city is the largest in the UK, because Londen actually exists of multiple cities (Westminster, and what else?), that are each smaller than Birmingham.

In my perception, it is more interesting to refer to cities as they are perceived by the average citizen/visitor, than on formal grounds (like administrative boundaries). So the figure for Paris ought to include the part of the "banlieue" everybody calls "Paris", and Londen, of course, should be considered one city. The figure ought to include all citizens living in a place commonly known as Paris, London etc. This rule provides guidance which suburbs should be considered part of a large cities, and which suburbs shouldn't. Rbakels (talk) 06:56, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Nicosia?

Is not on the list but on your own article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicosia) the population is 313,400 in the Republic and 84,893 in the Pseudo North. The total population within city limits is therefore 398,293 and should be 69th on the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.226.138 (talk) 12:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The Northern Cyprus part does not belong to EU, so it can't be included. 85.217.42.202 (talk) 07:11, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Two almost same lists?

List of cities in the European Union with more than 100,000 inhabitants seems to be the same list, but including smaller cities. 104 cities here versus 448 in the other. Though I made only a quick peek, these seems otherwise similar. 85.217.42.202 (talk) 07:10, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

31.

In list is two 31. rang? Szajci ^pošta 12:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Lyon

It's ridiculous to consider the urban area of Lyon's population as that "within city limits". The comparison to the Greater London Authority seems dubious to me. The Mayor of London and the London Assembly are directly elected. The assemblies of French urban communities are indirectly chosen by the assemblies of the individual communes. Using the urban community for Lyon and other French cities is really against the spirit of what this list is supposed to be. 150.250.188.180 (talk) 16:03, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

File:Dublin aerial photograph.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Dublin aerial photograph.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests March 2012 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. To take part in any discussion, or to review a more detailed deletion rationale please visit the relevant image page (File:Dublin aerial photograph.jpg) This is Bot placed notification, another user has nominated/tagged the image --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 15:06, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

So, has the issue been resolved? There is no picture for Dublin, but there is for every other city. Can someone sort this out? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.77.111.117 (talk) 01:58, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

European Union vs. Europe

Would it not be wiser to include non-EU cities in the list and rename the list, like in the list of metropolitan areas in Europe? --Oddeivind (talk) 11:55, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be much better if this article changed its name to "Largest cities of Europe by population within city limits" and add all European countries, as the EU countries would automatically be included. Jørgen88 (talk) 01:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Wirral

Wirral is not a city, why is it on this list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nessy76 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with this: there are a number of towns (e.g. Wallasey, Birkenhead, Bebington, Ellesmere Port, Heswall) within 2 (3?) administrative districts, but no cities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.10.255.146 (talk) 08:16, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Since Wirral is not a city but a Metropolitan Borough, I propose that unless there are any objections, it is removed from this list. PennyDarling (talk) 16:44, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Wrong sorting

"The cities are sorted by the column labelled Eurostat population"? I don't think so ;-) Look at Bucharest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.193.221.34 (talk) 12:16, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

strange

The Metropolitan Boroughs of Wakefield and Wirral are listed, but the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley (310k+), Sandwell (300k+), Doncaster (300k+) and Wigan (310k+) are missing. Any explanation?--Berlin guy (talk) 19:18, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

That is a good point. Though Dudley, Sandwell, Doncaster, and Wigan don't hold 'city status' in the UK, neither does Wirral, and they are all administrative areas in their own rights so would qualify for this list on that basis. 86.184.117.22 (talk) 20:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Cities without city limits

The city of Copenhagen consists of several municipalities. For instance is municipality of Frederiksberg located as an enclave with 100.000+ inhabitants whithin Copenhagen municipality. The urban area consists of a dozen municipalities and has 1,2 million+ inhabitants. While f.i. Berlin city limits covers agricultural areas and forests. I removed Copenhagen from this list since the "city limits" was interpreted as the municipality of Copenhagen only (which only covers around 75 km²). No incorporations of new territory to Copenhagen municipality has been done since 1902 ! I suggest we make a list of European cities based on urban area insted (not to be confused with the list of metropolitan areas) This list isn't comparable. Different standards between the different countries makes this list disenlightning for our readers Boeing720 (talk) 04:29, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree with any of that, but for a list of this kind to serve any purpose, it has to build on a source. That source is the Eurostat report about population figures in cities in the EU. I don't think it's perfect, and there are other errors apart from the one you list. Still, we cannot randomly delete or add figures as we want (see WP:OR). If you have an alternative source to use for the article, I'm sure that would be well received as long as it fulfills WP:RS.Jeppiz (talk) 13:09, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

That Eurostat source is from 2003–2006, making it clearly outdated. Besides, the link appears to be dead in any case. --Jaakko Sivonen (talk) 21:50, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

ISTANBUL ??

What is "ISTANBUL" in "reference" [3] (looks more like a Note than a Reference!): "Refers to ISTANBUL which is composed of 32 independent borough councils and the City of London"? I cannot find a definition through Google.   Oosoom ^Talk  11:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Solved. –Kingston28 (talk) 16:10, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Symbols

I added the coats of arms of these cities, as the heraldic emblem plays a central role in European history, and as these still are the principal urban symbols. I don't see why they shouldn't be shown. -Ssolbergj (talk) 14:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

In my my opinion, they should not be shown because they distract from the purpose of the list. The current format makes the list clearer. First comes the ranking in order to size, then comes the name. In your version, the ranking is immediately followed by a large coat of arms instead of the name of the city, which only comes afterwards. Virtually every reader is more likely to be looking for the name of the city rather than the coat of arms. There are lots of things we could add (coat of arms, current mayor, etc.), but what is the relevance for a reader who comes to an article to look for how large different cities are? They are interested in the ranking, the name of the city, the population and (usually) the area, as it's relevant to know if it's a small population concentrated in a small space or not; population density could also be immediately relevant. Nobody is likely to come here looking for the coat of arms of a city. Filling the table with information readers aren't looking for, no matter how factually incorrect, is not helpful to the readers.Jeppiz (talk) 14:09, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• In my opinion, better without symbols (if flag with name of city in the same row). While the symbols in a separate column (version by Ssolbergj) - this is unacceptable. Subtropical-man talk
  (en-2) 18:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of largest California cities by population which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 11:14, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Strong POV and OR problems

This whole list, which used to be based on a source, has now become a swamp of WP:OR and WP:POV. It's really quite simple: whenever there's a list, there has to be a source. In this list, there is none. Where is the source that says, for example, that Bucharest is the 6th largest city in the EU, Sofia the 14th largest or Zagreb the 24th largest. It appears that what people have done in this article is to the population of different cities from different sources, and then put together a list. That is WP:OR through and through, as it's individual users, not any source, that claim a given city has a given ranking. Ideally, a source satisfying WP:RS should be found. If not, the article needs to be deleted. So called "Lists" entirely made up by Wikipedia users have no place here. Jeppiz (talk) 23:10, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

First - there is nowhere POV. Second - every article about the cities have the same problem, not only articles of Europe/EU, lists of cities in any countries is also the same rank. Thirdly, just change word of "Rank" to name of "No" or leave the field blank. The term of "rank" suggests that something is the greatest or 60th, word of "No" or the field blank instead "rank" it will just list. Subtropical-man talk
(en-2) 09:11, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

POV in the sense that as long as it's not based on a source, anyone can change the list to inflate their city. And that other some other articles have the same problem is a moot point (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). So I repeat my question, which source is this list based on? As long as we present it as a list in order of population figures, there has to be a source for it.Jeppiz (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

1. "POV in the sense that as long as it's not based on a source, anyone can change the list to inflate their city" - totally nonsense. According to your theory all articles without a source (automatically) can violate the principle of NPOV because if there are no sources, anyone can change for their own benefit. But, no one in Wikipedia do not treat in this way, if there no sources, in Wikipedia use templates of Unreferenced or fact, never Original research or POV.
2. Most other articles (list of largest cities) have the same problem - this is fact. Please do not take some essays. The problem needs to be solved in discussion about the whole problem, not just the cities of Europe - should be based on neutral point of view (not oppress or favor one continent).
3. Source of Eurostat is dead link from some time and does not show that the city is at what rank (largest or 60th or ...). In addition, the source have a 11 years old and is out of date. The data by Eurostat from 2004 are outdated. Subtropical-man talk
   (en-2) 23:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Two exactly the same discussions? Cuts off the discussion here. Continuation of this discussion is here. Subtropical-man talk
(en-2) 23:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Brussels

The municipality of Brussels has 177,849 inhabitants. Using the population of the Brussels Region is an error. I know what many people would say: there is the case of Greater London. But this is an error:

• if in the British case the administrative structure is not standardized, this is not the case of counties in continental Europe adopting the Napoleonic administrative pyramid. In these cases (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Switzerland....) the commune (comune, gemeinde...) is the municipality without doubt and, more, without exceptions.
• using the Region to identify Brussels is an error because the Region has not the powers and the role of a municipality, but of a US state. The Brussels Region has the same powers of Flanders region or Wallonia Region. So if we use Brussels Region, we should use the Flanders and Wallonia Regions too!
• the Mayor of Brussels rules only the municipality. The Mayor of London rules all Greater London. More, the case of Greater London is an unique case in Britain, so it can be used without POVS. As said, this is not the case of Brussels Region.
• nl.wiki and fr.wiki, significantly, both consider the municipality of Brussels as "Brussels".

Really, there is a case which is very similar to Brussels (an urban area much larger than the municipality but without a general mayor) and is not the case of London but the case of Athens. And Athens is shown in this list (correctly) as a municipality of 664,000 inhabitants, even if the real Athens (Athens Prefecture) is a city of 3,000,000 inhabitants.--79.6.141.205 (talk) 15:50, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

"Brussels-Capital Region" is official name, with a population of 1,138,854. Subtropical-man talk
(en-2) 21:08, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Exactly... one of the three Regions of Belgium, which are similar to a US state or a Province of Canada. Definetely not a city.--79.6.141.205 (talk) 21:49, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I see your point and I totally agree with you. After all, the title of this page is "List of largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits" and so, by definition, Brussels should not be included in the list.--Kingston28 (talk) 13:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

These kind of discussions are rather meaningless as long as the so-called "list" is just a random collection of cities put together by Wikipedia users ignoring WP:OR. Any list need to be based on a source, and then follow what the source says. The lack of proper sourcing is exactly what discussions like this one arise.Jeppiz (talk) 21:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree it's a mistake to use the population figure for the entire Brussels Region. The city of Brussels had a population of 175,534 in 2015. I also agree with Jeppiz that this article is a complete mess. — 37 ^(talk) 10:58, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Being a local of the "Brussels-capital Region"; I could say that it is the Brussels-capital region which is generally considered part of what is considered "Brussels"; which is itself subdivided into 19 "communes", one of which bearing the name of Brussels. If you want to make a parallel with the US, the equivalent would be "Washington D.C." which has some characteristics of a U.S. state but not entirely. I think that nobody will question the real boundaries of "Washington D.C.". I think the real question that we need to answer is "is there an administrative entity corresponding to what is perceived as the city by the local?" Clearly the answer to this question for Brussels is the "Brussels-Capital Region". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.197.50 (talk) 09:55, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

What is perceived as a city is not an administrative area though. The Brussels-Capital Region spans a conurbation, with multiple urban centres (albeit, Brussels being the main one). Other towns in the Brussels-Capital Region have distinct identities, and are described as "suburbs". Similarly, parts of Paris' urban area in the Petite Couronne "Inner RIng" are always described as Paris' suburbs, and form part of the identity of Paris. We don't consider the Paris and the Petite Couronne the city limit of Paris. Like I said in my post below, I think we should list both. This is a list of city limits, and evidently some cities have more than one area that could be considered the city' limit. Rob984 (talk) 17:12, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I do think that we have to consider "the" administrative area. After all it's that we do for countries. Had the Scottish voted for their independence, this would have immediately changed the population of the UK without anyone having moved; but that does not means that listing the population of the UK is nonsense. Usually the territorial limit of a country poses less problems though (although some special oversea territories might sometimes poses problems too but that's an other question). Now that's true that sometimes it is unclear which administrative limit have to be taken into consideration. For Brussels, both the city center and the "Brussels-Capital" region bears the name of Brussels and are candidate. My point is that the Brussels Capital Region that should be considered to be Brussels and the 19 "communes" being the equivalent of the Paris "arrondissements". Note that the local population of Brussels do not call any of 19 communes the suburb (périphérie). What is called the suburb is the territory outside the 19 communes (but within the broader much less well defined metropolitan aera or urban aera). This is an error we see sometimes in Foreign media. As an anecdote I remember the Begian TV (RTBF) complaining that the French media called "Molenbeek" (one of the Brussels commune) the Brussels suburb when it was not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.197.50 (talk) 21:25, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with List of cities in the European Union with more than 100,000 inhabitants

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Archiving discussion, there is not enough input into the merge. AlbinoFerret 22:24, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

---

Seems to be a redundancy here. The target list seems to be the better choice for retention. Safiel (talk) 17:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Initiating an RfC, since there as been no response in three days and this needs to be dealt with. Safiel (talk) 04:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
• Comment - from 26 March 2015, already exists discussion about it here: Talk:List_of_cities_in_the_European_Union_with_more_than_100,000_inhabitants#Merge. Subtropical-man talk
  (en-2) 15:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Trouble is, that merge proposal was never set up correctly and has attracted no discussion in over a month. Also, generally, discussions should be held on the talk page of the target article, not the article to be merged/redirected to the target. That is why I started this discussion here. Safiel (talk) 18:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Support merging into this article. Cobblet (talk) 09:45, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pictures of Paris and Berlin

The photos of Paris and Berlin need to be switched (I don't think the Eiffel Tower is in Berlin, last time I checked). Foreignshore (talk) 19:13, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Cities with more than one city limit?

London and Brussels both have two areas that could be considered "city limits". Each have one area with city-status: the City of London and the City of Brussels, and another administrative area: Greater London region and Brussels-Capital Region. By no means do I think every city with some kind of outer city-region should have two figures, but in these cases there is clear ambiguity in what is considered the "city limit", so why not just list both? The title specifies "city limits"–of which they both are. To be clear, I think they should remain in the same entry, with the position determined by the larger figure, eg "8,538,689 / 7,375"; and a note explaining the two areas. Rob984 (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Removal of UK cities

The UK remains a part of the EU (for now at least) and therefore UK cities should remain in the table. Someone removed them and there were a number of changes after that, but none I think were substantive. I have reverted back to the good table. I hope I haven't destroyed anything useful. Francis Davey (talk) 20:22, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Agree Boeing720 (talk) 22:27, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Duplicate population

Vilnius(rank 45) and Pozna(rank 53) have the same population. Vilnius is supposed to be rank 52. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RadicalPrinciple (talk • contribs) 23:10, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Which "city limits" ?

This list is very misleading, as the rules for city limits differ extremely much between different countries. Some examples - Paris is together with London and Moscow, the largest cities in Europe. For Copenhagen is only its tiny municipality value shown, another city, Frederiksberg is located totally inside Copenhagen. And 150 year old parts of Copenhagen (like Hellerup) are located in what may look like suburban areas, but which isn't. This comes down to local politics, Denmark doesn't want more than a third of its population to live in one city, on the paper. Amsterdam is more or less built together with Hague and several other cities, Dortmund is just a smaller part of the Ruhr-conglomerate. While Berlin includes huge areas of woods and other green areas but is built together with Potsdam. In some cases are there no city limits at all. I've already mentioned Copenhagen, but neither Stockholm has any city limits. I would like to change this list to urban areas instead. At least for cities which lacks city limits. This ought to be the case for Paris regardless of any possible city limits. Point is, as of now , this list cannot be used for any purpose. Boeing720 (talk) 22:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

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Criteria for being in list

Based on the lead sentence, the criteria for being in the list is the "100 largest cities in EU." Assuming a "normal" distribution, there are several cities just below the threshold. If an appropriate population estimate is discovered a city may join the list knocking the lowest city off even though this city may also have had a population increase that should keep it on.

I think the threshold should be an absolute number. I suggest 300,000 since this is just below the current 100th city's listed population.User-duck (talk) 04:05, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Added several cities exceeding the 300,000 threshold. One month of no comments implies acceptance. Working as expected, several of the original top 100 would have been knocked off. Some cities are more difficult to get current population estimates than others. The quality of some of the references is marginal at best.User-duck (talk) 02:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Eliminate the rank column

I just re-ranked the list. This should be done every time a population estimate is updated. I had updated most of the Spain cities based on a more current reference. A couple of cities went up more than 30 positions causing a ranking change to many others. Since I did not reorder the data in the table, the initial table is no longer in rank order. Since the ranking is based on population sorting the table by Rank or Official Population will produce the data in the same order.

Bottom line: eliminating the Rank column will greatly reduce the maintenance required with minor loss of functionality.User-duck (talk) 04:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

P.S. I would favor functionality added to tables that would automatically display rank.User-duck (talk) 04:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Removed Rank column. One month of no comments implies acceptance. Adding cities with 300,000+ next.User-duck (talk) 19:35, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Discrimination Athens-Brussels

What’s the difference between Athens and Brussels? Both the cities cover the urban center only, but Athens is counted in its City limits, while Brussels in its regional metro limits. Such a discrimination is not objective.--Utente provinciale (talk) 15:36, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Obsolete data

I have changed numbers for Genua and Essen, but the context too complicated for me. Xx236 (talk) 10:46, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

the most populous urban area

The phrase is linked to Paris metropolitan area, it surprises me. I would rather expect a page about the most populous urban areas.Xx236 (talk) 06:06, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Land Area

It strikes me that since the entire second paragraph seems to be a disclaimer for the figures that it more than worth it to add the land area to each entry in the table. I find these articles of city limits useful, as it's the only consistent way to compare cities (though other measurements are certainly worthwhile). But if we're going to to get into any detail about how some city/local government boundaries span vast territories and others don't, perhaps we should show that, too.--Criticalthinker (talk) 10:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Brussels is missing

Brussels should definitely be on this list and it is not. According to official numbers, it has a population of over 1M people. And it is know as Belgium’s most populous city. Antwerp, which is 2nd, did make the list. 24.4.177.254 (talk) 07:32, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

You are missing Brussels

You are missing Brussels 94.109.158.234 (talk) 10:34, 10 July 2022 (UTC)