List of metropolitan areas in Europe explained
This list ranks metropolitan areas in Europe by their population according to three different sources; it includes metropolitan areas that have a population of over 1 million.
Sources
List includes metropolitan areas according only to the studies of ESPON, Eurostat, and OECD. For European countries not covered by the three institutions, City Population is used as the population count source for the purpose of assessing the inclusion criteria. For this reason some metropolitan areas, like the Italian Genoa Metropolitan Area (with a population of 1,510,781 as of 2010[1]) or the Ukrainian Kryvyi Rih metropolitan area (with a population of 1,170,953 as of 2019[2]), are not included in this list, with data by other statistic survey institutes.
Figures in the first three columns correspond to Functional urban areas (FUA). The concept of a functional urban area defines a metropolitan area as a core urban area defined morphologically on the basis of population density, plus the surrounding labour pool defined on the basis of commuting.Figures in the first two columns use a harmonised definition of a Functional urban area developed jointly in 2011, with delimitation basing on the DEGURBA method.[3] [4]
Figures in the fourth column come from City Population and correspond to variously defined urban agglomerations.
Further information on how the areas are defined can be found in the source documents. These figures should be seen as an interpretation, not as conclusive fact.
Metropolitan areas
| Metropolitan area name | Country | OECD
(2020)[5] | Eurostat[6] | ESPON
(2006)[7] | City Population
(urban agglomerations)
(2024)[8] |
|---|
| Amsterdam metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | |
| Antwerp |  | | (2021) | | |
| Athens metropolitan area |  | | (2011) | | |
| Baku |  | | | | |
| Barcelona metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | |
| Belgrade |  | | | | |
| Bergamo |  | | (2022) | | |
| Berlin metropolitan area |  | | (2021) | | |
| Bilbao | | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Bordeaux |  | | (2020) | | |
| Greater Bristol |  | | (2018) | | <1,000,000 |
| Brussels metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Bucharest metropolitan area |  | | (2018) | | |
| Budapest metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | |
| Cardiff | | | (2018) | | <1,000,000 |
| Copenhagen metropolitan area |  | | (2013) | | |
| Donetsk |  | | | | |
| Dnipro | | | | | |
| Dresden | | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Dublin Metropolitan Area | | | (2011) | | 2,125,000 |
| Metropolitan City of Florence | | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Frankfurt Rhine-Main | | | (2021) | | |
| Gdańsk (Tricity) |  | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Greater Glasgow | | | (2018) | | |
| Gothenburg |  | | (2018) | | <1,000,000 |
| The Hague | | | (2021) | | |
| Hamburg Metropolitan Region | | | (2021) | | |
| Hannover | | | (2021) | | |
| Helsinki Metropolitan Area |  | | (2022) | | |
| Istanbul |  | | (2004) | | |
| Katowice metropolitan area | | | (2021) | | |
| Kazan metropolitan area | | | | | |
| Kharkiv | | | | | |
| Kyiv metropolitan area | | | | | |
| Kraków metropolitan area | | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Leipzig | | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Lille | | | (2020) | | |
| Lisbon metropolitan area |  | | (2023) | | |
| Łódź metropolitan area | | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| London metropolitan area | | | (2018) | | |
| Lyon | | | (2020) | | |
| Madrid metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Málaga-Marbella | | | (2022) | | |
| Greater Manchester | | | (2018) | | |
| Mannheim-Ludwigshafen | | | (2021) | | |
| Marseille | | | (2020) | | |
| Merseyside (Liverpool/Birkenhead) | | | (2018) | | |
| Milan metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Minsk metropolitan area |  | | | | |
| Moscow metropolitan area | | | | | |
| Munich | | | (2021) | | |
| Nantes | | | (2020) | | <1,000,000 |
| Naples metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Nice | | | (2020) | | <1,000,000 |
| Nizhny Novgorod | | | | | |
| Nottingham-Derby | | | (2018) | | |
| Northwest Metropolitan Region (Bremen) | | | (2021) | | |
| Nuremberg Metropolitan Region | | | (2021) | | |
| Odesa | | | | | |
| Greater Oslo Region |  | | (2013) | | |
| Ostrava metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Palermo metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Paris metropolitan area | | | (2020) | | |
| Perm | | | | | |
| Porto Metropolitan Area | | | (2023) | | |
| Portsmouth-Southampton | | | (2018) | | |
| Poznań metropolitan area | | | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Prague metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Rhein-Nord (Düsseldorf - Neuss) | | | (2021) | | |
| Rhein-Süd (Cologne - Bonn) | | | (2021) | | |
| Riga metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Rome metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Rostov-on-Don | | | | | |
| Rotterdam | | | (2022) | | |
| Ruhr | | | (2021) | | |
| Saarbrücken - Forbach | /
| | (2021) | | <1,000,000 |
| Saint Petersburg metropolitan area | | | | | |
| Samara | | | | | |
| Saratov | | | | | |
| Seville | | | (2021) | | |
| Sofia |  | | (2022) | | |
| Metropolitan Stockholm | | | (2018) | | |
| South Yorkshire (Sheffield-Doncaster) | | | (2018) | | |
| Stuttgart Metropolitan Region | | | (2021) | | |
| Tbilisi |  | | | | |
| Thessaloniki metropolitan area | | | (2011) | | |
| Toulouse | | | (2020) | | |
| Turin metropolitan area | | | (2022) | | |
| Tyne and Wear (Newcastle-Sunderland) | | | (2018) | | |
| Ufa | | | | | |
| Utrecht | | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Valencia | | | (2022) | | |
| Vienna |  | | | | |
| Volgograd | | | | | |
| Voronezh | | | | | |
| Warsaw metropolitan area | | | (2021) | | |
| West Midlands conurbation (Birmingham) | | | (2018) | | |
| West Yorkshire Built-up Area (Leeds - Bradford) | | | (2018) | | |
| Yerevan |  | | | | |
| Zagreb metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | <1,000,000 |
| Zürich metropolitan area |  | | (2022) | | | |
Polycentric metropolitan areas in the European Union
| Rank | Area | State | Population[9] |
|---|
| 1 | Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region | | 12,190,000 |
| 2 | Randstad | | 6,787,000 |
| 3 | Katowice-Ostrava metropolitan area | / | 5,294,000 |
| 4 | Flemish Diamond | | 5,103,000 |
| 5 | Vienna-Bratislava metropolitan region | / | 4,600,000 | |
See also
Regional and country-specific lists
External links
- Geopolis: research group, university of Paris-Diderot, France - Population of urban areas of 10,000 or more
Notes and References
- Web site: Urbanismi, Cluster urbani e aree metropolitane – volume primo, Italia . 23 February 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141006092229/http://www.cityrailways.it/storage/pdf/01_urbanismi%20ITALIA_2011.pdf . 6 October 2014 . dead . it.
- Web site: Чисельність наявного населення України на 1 січня 2019.
- Lewis Dijkstra, Hugo Poelman . 2012-03-01 . Cities in Europe - The new OECD-EC definition . 2 . 2024-06-08 . 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..
- Web site: Territorial typologies manual - cities, commuting zones and functional urban areas . . "Within the Urban Audit, (...) functional urban areas were previously referred to as ‘larger urban zones’.".
- Web site: https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?lc=en&df[ds=dsDisseminateFinalDMZ&df[id]=DSD_FUA_DEMO%40DF_AGE_SEX&df[ag]=OECD.CFE.EDS&fs[0]=Topic%2C1%7CRegions&pg=0&fc=Topic&bp=true&snb=17&pd=%2C&dq=.A..._T...CTRY%2BFUA&to[TIME_PERIOD]=false&lo=5&lom=LASTNPERIODS&vw=tb&ly[rw]=REF_AREA%2CTERRITORIAL_LEVEL&ly[cl]=TIME_PERIOD OECD Data Explorer - Population by age and sex - Cities and FUAs]. OECD. 19 December 2023.
- Web site: Database. 16 Jun 2024. ec.europa.eu. Eurostat. Population on 1 January by age groups and sex - functional urban areas (urb_lpop1)
- Web site: Study on Urban Functions (Project 1.4.3)]. March 2007. European Spatial Planning Observation Network. https://web.archive.org/web/20150924002318/http://www.espon.eu/export/sites/default/Documents/Projects/ESPON2006Projects/StudiesScientificSupportProjects/UrbanFunctions/fr-1.4.3_April2007-final.pdf. 24 September 2015., Final Report, Chapter 3
- Web site: 1 January 2024 . Brinkhoff . Thomas . Major Agglomerations of The World . 4 March 2024 . citypopulation.de.
- [European Spatial Planning Observation Network]
