The functional urban area (FUA), previously known as larger urban zone (LUZ), [1] is a measure of the population and expanse of metropolitan and surrounding areas which may or may not be exclusively urban. [2] It consists of a city and its commuting zone, [3] which is a contiguous area of spatial units that have at least 15% of their employed residents working in the city. [4]
The FUA represents an attempt at a harmonised definition of the metropolitan area. Eurostat's objective was to have an area from which a significant share of the residents commute into the city, a concept known as the "functional urban region." [5] To ensure a good data availability, Eurostat adjusts the FUA boundaries to administrative boundaries that approximate the functional urban area. [6]
The definition was introduced under the name Larger urban zone (LUZ) in 2004 by Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union (EU), in agreement with the national statistics offices in the member states. [7] [8] Eurostat data is provided only for zones in the EU countries, candidate countries and EFTA countries. Several cities were excluded by definition from the 2004 list of LUZs on technical, definitional grounds, such as the coincidence of the metropolitan area with the urban zone. [9] [10] [11]
In 2006 LUZ definitions were changed significantly, improving the comparability of LUZ definitions across different countries, and allowing for almost all cities to be included.[ citation needed ]
In 2011, the European Commission has developed a new definition of LUZ in cooperation with the OECD. [12] The term Larger urban zone (LUZ) was later renamed as the Functional urban area (FUA). [1]
In 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, the International Labour Organization, and the World Bank have also adopted the Functional urban area as their definition for delimitation of metropolitan areas. [13]
![]() | This section duplicates the scope of other articles, specifically List of metropolitan areas in Europe. |
This is a list of functional urban areas by population as of 2017. The 2004 Urban Audit also includes cities from EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and EU candidate countries, although the only candidate country for which there is available data is Turkey. Some cities, including Marseille, Lille, Nice, Cordoba, Badajoz, Toulon and Montpellier were excluded from the 2004 list on technical, definitional grounds, such as the coincidence of the metropolitan area with the urban zone.
Rank | Functional urban area | Country | Population | Area (km2) |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Paris | ![]() | 13,998,000 | 12,079.87 [14] |
2 | Istanbul | ![]() | 11,154,928 | |
3 | London | ![]() | 10,345,124 | 8,900 [14] |
4 | Madrid | ![]() | 5,804,829 | 8,022 |
5 | Ruhr Area | ![]() | 5,302,179 | 4,435 |
6 | Berlin | ![]() | 4,971,331 | 17,385 |
7 | Naples | ![]() | 4,475,682 | 564.95 |
8 | Barcelona | ![]() | 4,233,638 | 1,796.64 |
9 | Athens | ![]() | 4,013,368 | 3,806.92 |
10 | Ankara | ![]() | 3,736,359 | |
11 | Rome | ![]() | 3,457,690 | 3,666.66 |
12 | Hamburg | ![]() | 3,134,620 | 7,304 |
12 | Milan | ![]() | 3,076,643 | 1,348.32 |
13 | Katowice metropolitan area | ![]() | 2,710,397 | 2,650.65 |
14 | Stuttgart | ![]() | 2,663,660 | 3,654 |
15 | Warsaw | ![]() | 2,631,710 | 5,201.72 |
16 | Manchester | ![]() | 2,539,100 | 1,280 |
17 | Munich | ![]() | 2,531,706 | 5,504 |
18 | Frankfurt | ![]() | 2,517,561 | 4,305 |
19 | İzmir | ![]() | 2,459,474 | |
20 | Lisbon | ![]() | 2,435,837 | 1,432.49 |
21 | Budapest | ![]() | 2,393,846 | 2,538 [14] |
22 | Leeds | ![]() | 2,393,300 | 5,114 [14] |
23 | Birmingham | ![]() | 2,357,100 | 1,598 |
24 | Vienna | ![]() | 2,179,769 | 4,610.93 [14] |
25 | Bucharest | ![]() | 2,140,194 | 662 |
26 | Prague | ![]() | 1,964,750 | 6,977 [14] |
27 | Cologne | ![]() | 1,873,580 | 1,626 |
28 | Stockholm | ![]() | 1,860,872 | 6,519 |
29 | Copenhagen | ![]() | 1,806,667 [14] | 2,759 [14] |
30 | Brussels | ![]() | 1,800,663 | 1,613.91 |
31 | Glasgow | ![]() | 1,747,100 | 3,346 |
32 | Turin | ![]() | 1,745,221 | 1,878.97 |
33 | Lyon | ![]() | 1,717,300 | 5,997.68 [14] |
34 | Belgrade | ![]() | 1,683,962 | 514 |
35 | Valencia | ![]() | 1,564,145 | 1,440.58 |
36 | Dublin | ![]() | 1,535,446 [14] | |
37 | Düsseldorf | ![]() | 1,525,029 | 1,201 |
38 | Bursa | ![]() | 1,474,482 | |
39 | Amsterdam | ![]() | 1,443,258 | 859.28 |
40 | Adana | ![]() | 1,394,130 | |
41 | Liverpool | ![]() | 1,365,900 | 821 |
42 | Bielefeld | ![]() | 1,297,876 | 2,921 |
43 | Hanover | ![]() | 1,294,447 | 2,966 |
44 | Nuremberg | ![]() | 1,288,797 | 2,934 |
45 | Sheffield | ![]() | 1,277,100 | 1,846 |
46 | Kraków | ![]() | 1,264,322 | 2,988.65 |
47 | Sofia | ![]() | 1,263,807 [14] | 3,424.2 [14] |
48 | Seville | ![]() | 1,249,346 | 3,081.9 |
49 | Bremen | ![]() | 1,249,291 | 5,885 |
50 | Helsinki | ![]() | 1,224,107 | 2,969.94 |
51 | Rotterdam | ![]() | 1,186,818 | 611.75 |
52 | Łódź | ![]() | 1,163,516 | 2,857.51 |
53 | Ostrava | ![]() | 1,153,876 | 3,889.6 [14] |
54 | Zürich | ![]() | 1,110,478 | 1,086.14 |
55 | Tricity | ![]() | 1,105,203 | 3,457.32 |
56 | Porto | ![]() | 1,099,040 | 562.32 |
57 | Oslo | ![]() | 1,090,513 | 6,920 |
58 | Newcastle upon Tyne | ![]() | 1,055,600 | 3,385 |
59 | Gaziantep | ![]() | 1,052,795 | |
60 | Toulouse | ![]() | 1,052,497 | 4,706.93 [14] |
61 | Wrocław | ![]() | 1,031,439 | 4,582.2 |
62 | Poznań | ![]() | 1,018,511 | 3,719.2 |
63 | Gothenburg | ![]() | 1,015,974 | 3,694.86 |
64 | Bristol | ![]() | 1,006,600 | 1,635 |
65 | Riga | ![]() | 1,003,949 | 5,382.5 |
This is a list of functional urban areas. The Urban Audit also includes cities from EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and EU candidate countries. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses a similar definition of Functional Urban Area to represent population sizes of cities in OECD countries. [15] This data is also included.
The figures in the Eurostat database are an attempt at a compromise between harmonised data for all of the European Union, and with availability of statistical data, making comparisons more accurate. [16]
A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which are sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metropolitan area usually comprises multiple principal cities, jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts and even states and nations in areas like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.
The Katowice-Ostrava metropolitan area is a polycentric metropolitan area in southern Poland and northeastern Czech Republic, centered on the cities of Katowice and Ostrava, and has around 5 million inhabitants. Geographically, it is located mainly in Upper Silesia, with small parts of the area also in the historical regions of Moravia and Lesser Poland. Administratively, it is located in the three administrative units : mainly Silesian Voivodeship and a small western part of Lesser Poland Voivodeship in Poland, and also a small eastern part of Moravian-Silesian Region in the Czech Republic.
The London metropolitan area is the metropolitan area of London, England. It has several definitions, including the London Travel to Work Area, and usually consists of the London urban area, settlements that share London's infrastructure, and places from which it is practicable to commute to work in London. It is also known as the London commuter belt, or Southeast metropolitan area.
The Hamburg Metropolitan Region is a metropolitan region 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.
Helsinki metropolitan area or Greater Helsinki is the metropolitan area around Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. It also includes the smaller capital region. The terms Helsinki metropolitan area, Greater Helsinki, Capital region and the other terms used are not fixed and may vary in different contexts.
The Madrid metropolitan area is a monocentric metropolitan area in the centre of the Iberian peninsula, around the municipality of Madrid, Spain. It is not related to any sort of administrative delimitation, and thus, its limits are ambiguous.
The Copenhagen metropolitan area or Metropolitan Copenhagen is a large commuter belt surrounding Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. It includes Copenhagen Municipality, Frederiksberg and surrounding municipalities stretching westward across Zealand. It has a densely-populated core surrounded by suburban settlements.
Metropolitan areas in Romania are private agencies of public utility which were established by Law no. 351 of 6 July 2001 with the aim of encouraging the development of neighboring towns and communes within a radius of 30 km. The first to be established was the metropolitan area of Iași, on 8 April 2004, while the last is that of Drobeta-Turnu Severin, on 28 August 2019. There are 24 metropolitan areas in Romania that have been constituted as of 2019.
The Ostrava metropolitan area is the metropolitan area with the city of Ostrava in the Czech Republic at its center. The Ostrava urban area is the largest urban area in the metropolitan area with a population of 365,000. The metropolitan area has over 81% of the population of the Moravian-Silesian Region. The population of the metropolitan area is 970,189 as of 2024. An alternative definition, the Eurostat Larger Urban Zone, lists a population of 1,153,876. The Ostrava metropolitan area is sometimes combined with the Katowice metropolitan area to form a wider metropolitan area with a population of 5,008,000 (2015). The metropolitan area has 172 municipalities.
The Barcelona urban area is an urban area in Catalonia (Spain) centered on the city of Barcelona and located less than 100 km south of the border with France. With a population of over 5 million, it is one of the largest urban areas in Europe.
A 2001 ESPIN metropolitan area was defined as consisting of an urban area, conurbation or agglomeration, together with the surrounding area to which it was closely economically and socially integrated through commuting.
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.
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.
An aire d'attraction d'une ville is a statistical area used by France's national statistics office INSEE since 2020, officially translated as functional area in English by INSEE, which consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and the surrounding exurbs, towns and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the central urban agglomeration, as measured by commuting patterns. INSEE's functional area (AAV) is therefore akin to what is most often called metropolitan area in English.
The Vilnius urban area is the urban area of Vilnius. The urban area covers several municipalities in the Vilnius County.
Within the Urban Audit, (...) functional urban areas were previously referred to as 'larger urban zones'.
The main building blocks are data for 1 km² population grid cells. […] The typology for functional urban areas is established at the level of local administrative units (LAUs). Once all grid cells have been classified and urban centres identified, the next step concerns overlaying these results onto LAUs […]
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(help)Until recently, there was no harmonised definition of 'a city' for European and other countries member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This undermined the comparability, and thus also the credibility, of cross-country analysis of cities. To resolve this problem, the OECD and the European Commission developed a new definition of a city and its commuting zone in 2011. […] Each city is part of its own commuting zone or a polycentric commuting zone covering multiple cities. These commuting zones are significant, especially for larger cities. The cities and commuting zones together (called Larger Urban Zones) account for 60 % of the EU population.