Jump to content

List of urban areas in the European Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mmatic42 (talk | contribs) at 10:46, 20 March 2020 (I have added a top 30). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is a list of urban areas in the European Union with over 500,000 inhabitants as of 2014. The data comes from Demographia and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.[1][2][3] Demographia provides figures for urban areas (including conurbations),[2] while the UN DESA figures are for agglomerations only.[3] For comparison, Function Urban Area (FUA) population figures by Eurostat are also provided, however, these measure the wider metropolitan areas.

Important notes

  • This is a list of urban areas, not a list of metropolitan areas. Urban areas are contiguous built-up areas where houses are typically not more than 200 m apart, not including rivers, parks, roads, industrial fields, etc. A metropolitan area is an urban area plus any satellite cities around it and any agricultural land in between. For instance Paris is sometimes listed with 12 million inhabitants, Stuttgart is frequently listed with 2.2 million inhabitants, Munich with 2 million or more, etc., indicating the wider metropolitan area of those places. Metropolitan areas, which imply much more complicated definitions (such as the proportion of people in satellite cities working in the core of the metropolitan area), can be accurately computed only by statistical offices, after they have chosen a definition for metropolitan areas, whereas urban areas can be computed by any institution or person with the study of maps, satellite imagery and other geographical data in order to determine the outer limits of a continuous built-up area with one or more neighbouring cities. Furthermore, the list does not make a difference between cities that have multiple satellites and cities that do not. Therefore, two cities with the same demographics for their urban area will have an equal ranking on this list, even if one of the two cities may be much larger as it is the core of a number of satellites.
  • This is a list of urban areas, not a list of administrative cities. For example, the list of conurbations contains the urban area of Lille-Kortrijk. Lille and Kortrijk remain two very distinct cities, each belonging to a different country, culture and language area. For a list of the largest cities of the European Union by population, please see List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits.
  • The study of urban areas is useful to analyse how cities develop, which in turn can be used to define transportation, planning and environmental policies, to adjust administrative boundaries etc. At the same time its limitations have to be acknowledged. It is a purely geographic study and disregards all other factors that contribute to the analysis of the functional city. For instance, several cities in the European Union, such as Brussels,have reserved green belts in the outskirts which impacts the size of urban areas but not the "perceived city" as these green belts have now become integrated in what people consider to be the functional city.

Urban areas over 500,000 inhabitants (2015-2019)

Rank Urban area Image State Population (urban areas; Demographia)[2] Population (agglomerations; UN WUP)[3] FUA population (metropolitan areas; Eurostat)[1] Density
(per km2; Demographia) 		Annual growth
rate (%;
Demographia)
1 Paris France 10,960,000 10,843,285 12,800,000 3,800 0.83
2 Ruhr Germany 6,660,000 N/A 11,300,000 2,800 0.01
3 Madrid Spain 6,345,000 6,729,254 7,100,000 4,600 0.27
4 Milan Italy 5,295,000 3,098,974 n/a 2,800 −0.16
5 Barcelona Spain 4,810,000 5,658,319 5,900,000 4,300 0.12
6 Berlin Germany 4,105,000 3,863,194 n/a 2,900 0.01
7 Rome Italy 3,995,000 3,717,956 n/a 3,400 0.89
8 Naples Italy 3,690,000 2,201,789 n/a 3,600 0.01
9 Athens Greece 3,495,000 3,051,899 n/a 5,000 0.29
10 Lisbon Portugal 2,705,000 2,884,297 n/a 2,800 0.39
11 Rotterdam–The Hague
Netherlands 2,680,000 N/A n/a 2,700 0.39
12 Budapest Hungary 2,520,000 1,713,903 3,100,000 1,900 −0.19
13 Warsaw Poland 2,300,000 1,722,310 3,000,000 3,200 0.67
14 Cologne-Bonn Germany 2,260,000 N/A n/a 2,300 0.50
15 Katowice (Katowice urban area) Poland 2,155,000 N/A n/a 3,300 0.11
16 Brussels Belgium 2,135,000 2,044,993 n/a 2,600 0.02[4]
17 Munich Germany 2,060,000 1,437,900 n/a 4,200 0.72[4]
18 Hamburg Germany 2,050,000 1,830,673 n/a 2,700 0.43[4]
19 Bucharest Romania 2,040,000 1,867,724 n/a 6,500 0.10[4]
20 Frankfurt Germany 2,005,000 n/a n/a 3,000 0.50
21 Vienna Austria 1,850,000 1,752,845 n/a 3,900 1.04[4]
22 Lyon France 1,680,000 1,608,712 n/a 1,300 0.50[4]
23 Amsterdam Netherlands 1,670,000 1,090,772 n/a 3,200 0.41[4]
24 Marseille France 1,605,000 1,605,046 n/a 3,100 0.46[4]
25 Stockholm Sweden 1,585,000 1,485,680 n/a 4,300 0.58[4]
26 Valencia Spain 1,575,000 n/a 5,700 0.29[4]
27 Turin Italy 1,530,000 1,764,868 n/a 4,100 −0.16[4]
28 Porto Portugal 1,480,000 1,299,437 n/a 1,900
29 Prague Czechia 1,375,000 2,156,809 2,620,000 4,600 −0.07[4]
30 Stuttgart Germany 1,375,000 n/a 2,900
31 Sofia Bulgaria 1,325,000 1,226,155 1,543,377 5,700 0.78[4]
32 Copenhagen Denmark 1,310,000 1,268,052 1,900,000 2,700 0.04[4]
33 Helsinki Finland 1,270,000 1,179,916 n/a 2,400 0.81[4]
34 Dublin Ireland 1,215,000 1,169,371 n/a 2,500 1.14[4]
35 Seville Spain 1,095,000 n/a 5,600
36 Lille France, Belgium 1,080,000 1,027,178 n/a 2,200 0.50[4]
37 Antwerp Belgium 1,025,000 n/a 1,500 0.05[4]
38 Toulouse France 985,000 n/a 1,100 0.72[4]
39 Bordeaux France 980,000 n/a 700 0.60[4]
40 Nice France 955,000 n/a 1,300 0.52[4]
41 Nantes France 930,000 n/a 1,100
42 Bergamo Italy 870,000 n/a 3,300
43 Gdańsk (Tricity) Poland 855,000 n/a 5,000
44 Thessaloniki Greece 845,000 n/a 4,300 0.39[4]
45 Florence Italy 835,000 n/a 3,700
46 Bilbao Spain 765,000 n/a 5,800
47 Kraków Poland 760,000 1,725,894 n/a 3,500
48 Dresden Germany 775,000 n/a 2,200
49 Palermo Italy 730,000 n/a 6,000 0.12[4]
50 Zaragoza Spain 730,000 n/a 5,700
51 Catania Italy 725,000 n/a 2,900
52 Málaga Spain 720,000 n/a 3,600
53 Hanover Germany 710,000 n/a 2,500
54 Utrecht Netherlands 705,000 n/a 3,900
55 Zagreb Croatia 700,000 n/a 4,400
56 Łódź Poland 680,000 n/a 5,000 −0.67[4]
57 Las Palmas Spain 670,000 n/a 6,800
58 Nuremberg Germany 665,000 n/a 3,000
59 Bremen Germany 640,000 n/a 2,400
60 Wrocław Poland 625,000 n/a 4,800
61
 Leipzig Germany 620,000 n/a 2,000
62 Mannheim Germany 615,000 n/a 3,500
63 Padua Italy 615,000 n/a 3,200
64 Genoa Italy 610,000 1,500,000 n/a 7,900
65 Riga Latvia 610,000 n/a 2,900
66 Gothenburg Sweden 610,000 n/a 2,700
67 Toulon France 575,000 n/a 700
68 Liège Belgium 565,000 n/a 1,900
69 Saarbrücken Germany 560,000 n/a 2,200
70 Palma, Majorca Spain 550,000
71 Aachen Germany 545,000 n/a 1,500
72 Bologna Italy 530,000
73 Poznań Poland 530,000 n/a 2,700
74 Grenoble France 525,000 n/a 985
75 Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spain 525,000
76 Douai-Lens France 510,000 n/a 1,100
77 Vilnius Lithuania 515,000 649,000 n/a 2,500
78 Murcia Spain 515,000

Top 20 and top 30 urban areas by population

class=notpageimage|
Location of the top 20 urban areas by population in the European Union.


class=notpageimage|
Location of the top 30 urban areas by population in the European Union.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Eurostat: Statistics on European cities. Retrieved 19 September 2016.
  2. ^ a b c Demographia: World Urban Areas. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Annual Population of Urban Agglomerations with 300,000 Inhabitants or More in 2014, by Country, 1950-2030 (thousands), World Urbanization Prospects, the 2014 revision Archived 18 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Retrieved 6 September 2015. Note: List based on estimates for 2015, from 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x United Nations: World Urbanization Prospects Archived 10 March 2007 at archive.today
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_urban_areas_in_the_European_Union&oldid=946470121"