There are eleven metropolitan regions in Germany [1] consisting of the country's most densely populated cities and their catchment areas. They represent Germany's political, commercial and cultural centres. The eleven metropolitan regions in Germany were organised into political units for planning purposes.
Based on a narrower definition of metropolises commonly used to determine the metropolitan status of a given city, [2] only four cities in Germany surpass the threshold of at least one million inhabitants within their administrative borders: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne.
For urban centres outside metropolitan areas that are a similar focal point for their region, but on a smaller scale, the concept of the Regiopolis and the related concepts of regiopolitan area or regio were introduced by urban and regional planning professors in 2006. [3]
Sorted alphabetically:
The five most important regions, collectively often called the Big Five, [4] [5] are frequently compared with other European metropolitan regions (EMR) in terms of investment and market development. [6] They are (from north to south): Hamburg, Berlin, the polycentric Ruhr-Düsseldorf-Cologne region (collectively referred to as Rhine-Ruhr), Frankfurt and Munich. The Globalization and World Cities Study Group (GaWC) considers Frankfurt and Munich as "α" (alpha) global cities, whereas the others are classified as "β" (beta) global cities. [7]
Each of them forms types of clusters and achieves varying levels of performance in areas, including business activity, human capital, information and technology exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. [8]
rank | metropolitan region (EMR) | core cities | states | population as by EMR [9] (2006) | population as by ESPON [10] (2007) | GDP per capita in € [11] (2006) | GMP in billion € [9] (2006) | HQs of MNC (FG500 [12] ) | annual passenger traffic (2008) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Rhine-Ruhr EMR | K, DO, D, E, DU | NW | 11.47 million | 12.19 million | 29,486 | 338.21 | 13 | 30.80 million |
Ruhr | DO, E, DU, BO | 5.26 million | 5.38 million | 25,266 | 132.90 | 4 | 2.30 million (DTM) | ||
Düsseldorf | D, W, MG | 3.12 million | 3.07 million | 34,658 | 108.13 | 5 | 18.15 million (DUS) | ||
Cologne/Bonn | K, BN | 3.09 million | 3.07 million | 31,448 | 97.18 | 4 | 10.35 million (CGN) | ||
2 | Frankfurt/Rhine-Main EMR | F, WI, MZ, DA, OF, HU | HE, RP, BY | 6.0million | 4.15 million | 35,000 | 193.20 | 4 | 57.44 million (FRA, HHN) |
3 | Berlin/Brandenburg EMR | B, P, CB | BE, BR | 5.95 million | 4.02 million | 21,981 | 130.78 | 1 | 21.40 million (TXL, SXF) |
4 | Stuttgart EMR | S, RT, ES, HN | BW | 5.29 million | — | 31,909 | 168.80 | 3 [13] | 9.93 million |
Stuttgart | S, ES | 2.67 million | 2.67 million | 35,492 | 94.76 | 3 [13] | 9.93 million [14] (STR) | ||
5 | Munich EMR | M, A, IN, LA, RO | BY | 5.20 million | 3.27 million | 39,155 | 203.61 | 7 | 34.73 million |
Munich [15] | M, FS | 2.59 million [16] | 2.67 million | 47,943 | 124.35 [16] | 7 | 34.73 million (MUC) | ||
6 | Central German EMR | L, DD, C, HAL, EF | SN, ST, TH | 4.36 million | — | 21,482 | 93.66 | 0 | 4.88 million |
Leipzig/Halle | L, HAL | 1.50 million | 1.21 million | no data | no data | 0 | 2.46 million (LEJ) | ||
Dresden | DD, PIR | 0.70 million [17] | 0.88 million | no data | no data | 0 | 1.86 million (DRS) | ||
7 | Hamburg EMR | HH, HL | HH, SH, NI | 4.27 million | 2.98 million | 33,210 | 141.81 | 2 | 12.84 million (HAM) |
8 | Hanover-Braunschweig- Göttingen-Wolfsburg EMR | H, BS, GÖ, WOB, SZ, HI | NI | 3.91 million | — | 27,251 | 106.55 | 3 | 5.74 million |
Braunschweig/Wolfsburg | BS, WOB, SZ | 1.00 million [18] | 1.00 million | no data | no data | 1 | 0.10 million (BWE) | ||
Hanover | H | 1.12 million * | 1.00 million | no data | no data | 2 | 5.64 million [19] (HAJ) | ||
9 | Nuremberg EMR | N, FÜ, ER, BT, BA | BY | 3.51 million | — | 29,955 | 105.14 | 0 | 4.27 million |
Nuremberg/Furth/Erlangen | N, FÜ, ER | 1.29 million | 1.58 million | no data | no data | 0 | 4.27 million [20] (NUE) | ||
10 | Bremen/Oldenburg EMR | HB, OL, HBx, DEL, WHV | HB, NI | 2.37 million | 1.08 million | 27,046 | 64.10 | 0 | 2.49 million (BRE) |
11 | Rhine-Neckar EMR | MA, LU, HD, WO | BW, RP, HE | 2.36 million | 2.93 million | 29,891 | 70.54 | 1 | 0 |
metropolitan regions in Germany | 57.74 million | 29,412 | 1,698.23 | 34 | 168.75 million | ||||
Germany | 80.22 million | 28,212 | 2,322.20 | 37 | 191.02 million [21] |
highest score of all metropolitan regions
highest score of all metropolitan areas
Cologne is the largest city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and over 3.1 million people in the Cologne Bonn urban region. Cologne is also part of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, the second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union. Centered on the left (west) bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about 35 km (22 mi) southeast of the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital Düsseldorf and 25 km (16 mi) northwest of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany.
North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a state (Land) in Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the most populous state in Germany. Apart from the city-states, it is also the most densely populated state in Germany. Covering an area of 34,084 square kilometres (13,160 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest German state by size.
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne, and the seventh-largest city in Germany, with a population of 653,253.
The Ruhr, also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km2 and a population of over 5 million (2017), it is the largest urban area in Germany. It consists of several large cities bordered by the rivers Ruhr to the south, Rhine to the west, and Lippe to the north. In the southwest it borders the Bergisches Land. It is considered part of the larger Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region of more than 10 million people, which is the third largest in Western Europe, behind only London and Paris.
Dortmund is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the ninth-largest city in Germany. With a population of 609,000 inhabitants, it is the largest city of the Ruhr as well as the largest city of Westphalia. It lies on the Emscher and Ruhr rivers in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region and is considered the administrative, commercial, and cultural centre of the eastern Ruhr. Dortmund is the second-largest city in the Low German dialect area, after Hamburg.
Düsseldorf Airport is the international airport of Düsseldorf, the capital of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is about 7 kilometres north of downtown Düsseldorf and some 20 kilometres southwest of Essen in the Rhine-Ruhr area, Germany's largest metropolitan area.
The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region is the largest metropolitan region in Germany, with over ten million inhabitants. A polycentric conurbation with several major urban concentrations, the region covers an area of 7,110 square kilometres (2,750 sq mi), entirely within the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region spreads from the Ruhr area (Dortmund-Bochum-Essen-Duisburg) in the north to the urban areas of the cities of Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Cologne, and Bonn in the south. The location of the Rhine-Ruhr at the heart of the European Blue Banana makes it well connected to other major European cities and metropolitan areas such as the Randstad, the Flemish Diamond and the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.
The Hamburg Metropolitan Region is a metropolitan area centred around the city of Hamburg in northern Germany, consisting of eight districts in the federal state of Lower Saxony, six districts in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and two districts in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern along with the city-state of Hamburg itself. It covers an area of roughly 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi) and is home to more than 5.1 million inhabitants.
The Central German Metropolitan Region is one of the officially established metropolitan regions in Germany. It is centered on the major cities of Leipzig and Halle, extending over Central German parts of the states of Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony. The Central German metropolitan region is the only one located entirely within the former East Germany. The "region" is not actually a metropolitan area in the geographic sense of the word as an agglomeration of nearby urban areas, rather it is a registered association, the Europäische Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland e.V. whose membership is composed of towns, cities, municipalities, and companies, colleges and chambers of commerce in the central German geographic area, whose representatives vote upon new members. For example, Jena joined the Metropolitan Region in 2009. The registered association owns the management company Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland Management GmbH. As such it forms a planning and marketing framework for the region while retaining the legal independence of its members.
The Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, often referred to as Rhein-Neckar-Triangle, is a polycentric metropolitan region located in south western Germany, between the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region to the North and the Stuttgart Region to the South-East.
DB Regio AG is a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn which operates regional and commuter train services in Germany. DB Regio AG, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. It is a 100% subsidiary of the Deutsche Bahn Group and there part of the DB Regio business segment, which also includes DB Regionnetz Verkehrs GmbH and other independent subsidiaries.
The Stuttgart Metropolitan Region is a metropolitan region in south-west Germany consisting of the cities and regions around Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Tübingen/Reutlingen. These cities are arranged into three agglomeration areas. The population of the area is about 5,300,000 and it is one of the biggest regions in Germany. This area covers an area of ca 15,000 km².
Rapid transit in Germany consists of four U-Bahn systems and fourteen S-Bahn systems. The U-Bahn commonly understood to stand for Untergrundbahn are conventional rapid transit systems that run mostly underground, while the S-Bahn or Stadtschnellbahn are commuter rail services, that may run underground in the city center and have metro-like characteristics in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin which they only have to a lesser extent in other cities. There are also over a dozen premetro or Stadtbahn systems that are rapid transit in the city center and light rail outside.
Germany is a country in Central and Western Europe that stretches from the Alps, across the North European Plain to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and is seventh-largest country by area in the continent. The area of Germany ranked 63rd and covers 357,021 km2 (137,847 sq mi), consisting of 349,223 km2 (134,836 sq mi) of land and 7,798 km2 (3,011 sq mi) of waters, smaller than Japan but larger than Republic of the Congo.
The Cologne Bonn Region is a metropolitan area in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany, covering the cities of Cologne, Bonn and Leverkusen, as well as the districts of Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, Oberbergischer Kreis, Rhein-Erft-Kreis and Rhein-Sieg-Kreis. The region covers an area of 3,839 km² with 3.13 million inhabitants. The city centres of Cologne and Bonn are 24 kilometres apart as the crow flies. At the outer city limits, there are only 8 kilometres between Cologne-Libur and Bonn-Geislar.
The Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, often simply referred to as Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Frankfurt Rhine-Main area or Rhine-Main area, is the second-largest metropolitan region in Germany after Rhine-Ruhr, with a total population exceeding 5.8 million. The metropolitan region is located in the central-western part of Germany, and stretches over parts of three German states: Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Bavaria. The largest cities in the region are Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Worms, Hanau, and Aschaffenburg.
Arab Germans, also referred to as German Arabs or Arabic Germans, are ethnic Arabs living in Germany. They form the second-largest predominantly Muslim immigrant group in Germany after the large Turkish German community.
Marietta Piekenbrock is a German art curator, dramaturge, author and a cultural manager. Her projects combine theatre, dance, performances and music with cultural history, architecture and everyday life. As an artistic manager of the Cultural Capital of Europe RUHR.2010 and Istanbul.2010, and for the Ruhrtriennale 2012-14, she invited international artists and curators to collaborate with the local cultural participants and players on developing new artistic projects in areas of radical social change. Her programmes of events and initiatives made a strong case for sustainable cultural practice. Her 2012 series of events "No Education" promoted a new discourse on the relationship between art, children and education.
The Munich Metropolitan Region is one of eleven metropolitan regions in Germany, consisting of the agglomeration areas of Munich, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Landshut, Rosenheim and Landsberg am Lech. It is Germany's fifth most populous metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan-Region, the Frankfurt Rhine-Main-Region, the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan-Region and the Stuttgart Metropolitan-Region.
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