What is Largest Urban Areas Of The European Union?

This is a list of all the urban areas of the European Union which have more than 750,000 inhabitants in 2005.

This list is an attempt to present a consistent list of population figures for urban areas in the European Union. Most of the figures here have been compiled by a research group at the University of Avignon, France, using a uniform definition but a considerable part of the figures have different sources, therefore one has to be careful when using this list to make comparisons between urban 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 not more than 200 metres apart (discounting rivers, parks, roads, industrial fields, etc.). A metropolitan area is an urban area plus the satellite cities around the urban area and the agricultural land in between. Yet, sometimes the metropolitan area of a city may also be smaller than the urban area. The list below contains for instance the urban area of Lille-Kortrijk. Geographically it may be a continuously built-up area, however both cities speak a different language, belong to different countries and have a different culture and hence there is only limited interaction between both cities. Therefore the metropolitan area of Lille will be smaller than the Lille - Kortrijk urban area. For a ranking of the European metropolitan areas, see Largest European metropolitan areas.
• This is a list of urban areas, not a list of cities. The list below contains for instance the urban area of Lille-Kortrijk. Lille and Kortrijk remain two very distinct cities, each belonging to a different country, culture and language area. For a list of the largest cities of the European Union by population, please see Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits.
• This is not a harmonized list, as the University of Avignon, France, has not calculated each of the urban areas on the list. Unfortunately Eurostat does not calculate the urban areas of the European Union. Yet Eurostat and the European Commission - for the purposes of their urban audits ^[2] - use the definition of Larger Urban Zone, which defines the area that constitutes the functional city. In addition, Eurostat and the European Commission have defined two further spatial levels, being the City Level and Sub-City District. All National Statistics Offices in the European Union have agreed on these new definitions since 2003. See "Largest cities and metropolitan areas in the European Union (Eurostat)" for a harmonized ranking of cities and metropolitan areas in the European Union using the definitions of Eurostat and the European Commission.
• The study of urban areas is useful to analyze 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 analyzis of the functional city. For instance, several cities in the European Union such as Brussels and London have introduced green belts which impacts the urban area but not the "perceived city" as these green belts have now become integrated in what people consider to be the functional city. Furthermore the list does not make a difference between cities that have multiple satellites and cities that do not. Therefore two cities with the same demographics for their urban area will have an equal ranking on this list, even if one of the two cities may be much larger as it is the core of a number of satellites.
• Please do not be surprised if you are used to higher figures for the cities listed below. London is sometimes listed with 14 million inhabitants, Stuttgart is frequently listed with 2.2 million inhabitants, Munich with 2 million or more, etc. This is because figures here are only for urban areas, which can be smaller than metropolitan areas. Also do not be surprised if you are used to lower figures for some of the cities listed below as the metropolitan area can be smaller than the urban area. Urban areas can be computed by private people or institutions using maps and looking where the built-up area stops. Metropolitan areas, which imply much more complicated definitions (such as the proportion of people in satellite cities working in the core of the metropolitan area), can be accurately computed only by statistical offices, after they have chosen a definition for metropolitan areas.

Urban areas of the European Union above 750,000 inhabitants

Rank	Urban Area	Population (2005 est.)	Change p.a. (1990s avg.)
1	Ruhr area-Wuppertal-Cologne, Germany	10 069 000	– 0.14%
2	Paris, France	9 928 000	0.21%
3	London, United Kingdom	9 332 000	0.68%
4	Madrid, Spain	4 858 000	0.32%
5	Brussels-Antwerp, Belgium	4 477 000	0.52%
6	Barcelona, Spain	4 062 000	0.95%
7	Greater Manchester-Liverpool, United Kingdom	3 851 000	– 0.09%
8	Milan, Italy	3 798 000	0.00%
9	Berlin, Germany	3 761 000
10	Athens, Greece	3 368 000	0.37%
11	Rotterdam-The Hague, Netherlands	3 340 000	0.50%
12	Naples, Italy	2 949 000	0.00%
13	Rome, Italy	2 867 000	– 0.85%
14	Lisbon, Portugal	2 398 000	0.27%
15	Birmingham-Wolverhampton (West Midlands), United Kingdom	2 371 000	– 0.10%
16	Hamburg, Germany	2 290 000	0.54%
17	Upper Silesian Metropolitan Area, Poland	2 248 000	– 0.95%
18	Budapest, Hungary	2 231 000	– 0.60%
19	Warsaw, Poland	2 135 000	0.01%
20	Bucharest, Romania	1 934 000[3]	0.16%
21	Vienna, Austria	1 892 000	0.25%
22	Lille-Kortrijk, France & Belgium	1 714 000 [1]	0.19%
23	Munich, Germany	1 656 000	0.20%
24	Leeds-Bradford (West Yorkshire), United Kingdom	1 641 000	0.35%
25	Frankfurt, Germany	1 489 000	0.29%
26	Lyon, France	1 449 000	0.46%
27	Copenhagen, Denmark	1 426 000	0.39%
28	Stockholm, Sweden	1 417 000	1.08%
29	Marseille, France	1 373 000	0.29%
30	Valencia, Spain	1 361 000	0.10%
31	Turin, Italy	1 321 000	– 0.95%
32	Porto, Portugal	1 300 000
33	Stuttgart, Germany	1 238 000	0.30%
34	Glasgow, United Kingdom	1 228 000	– 0.26%
35	Douai, France	1 197 000	0.19%
36	Amsterdam, Netherlands	1 193 000	0.64%
37	Bielefeld, Germany	1 181 000	0.65%
38	Helsinki, Finland	1 151 000	1.46%
39	Prague, Czech Republic	1 141 000	– 0.36%
40	Newcastle (Tyneside), United Kingdom	1 134 000
41	Sofia, Bulgaria	1 093 000[3]
42	Seville, Spain	1 067 000	0.56%
43	Dublin, Republic of Ireland	1 037 000[3]	0.89%
44	Nice, France	914 000[3]	0.42%
45	Toulouse, France	830 000[3]	1.47%
46	Thessaloniki, Greece	820 000[3]	0.67%
47	Bordeaux, France	790 000[3]	0.63%
48	ŁÃ³dź, Poland	776 000[3]	– 0.59%
49	Kraków, Poland	763 000[3]	0.37%

Notes

1. ^  75% of these on French territory, 25% on Belgian territory

EFTA countries

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

Rank	Urban Area	Population	Annual change (1990s)
1 (39)	Zürich, Switzerland	1 144 000[3]	0.19%
2 (58)	Oslo, Norway	802 000[3]	1.09%

Five fastest growing urban areas of the European Union

Rank	Urban Area	Annual change (1990s)
1	Toulouse, France	1.47%
2	Helsinki, Finland	1.46%
3	Braga, Portugal	1.28%
4	Stockholm, Sweden	1.08%
5	Dublin, Republic of Ireland	0.89%

Five fastest declining urban areas of the European Union

Rank	Urban Area	Annual change (1990s)
1	Riga, Latvia	– 1.36%
2	Genoa, Italy	– 1.01%
3	Katowice, Poland	– 0.95%
3	Turin, Italy	– 0.95%
5	Rome, Italy	– 0.85%

References

Figures without citations were taken from the Geopolis list of urban areas (as tabulated by INSEE).

See also

• Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits
• Largest cities and metropolitan areas in the European Union (Eurostat)
• Largest European metropolitan areas
• List of urban areas by population

External links

• Population of urban areas provided by UK National Statistics for UK urban areas
• World Urban Areas All urbanized areas 500,000+ and others: Population & Density

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