List of urban areas in the European Union

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 London is sometimes listed with 14 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 and London 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 (2015-2017)

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 10,950,000 10,843,285 11,800,000 3,800 0.83
2 London  United Kingdom 10,470,000 10,313,307 12,200,000 5,900 0.07
3 Ruhr  Germany 6,670,000 N/A 11,300,000 2,800 0.01
4 Madrid  Spain 6,310,000 6,229,254 6,600,000 4,600 0.27
5 Milan  Italy 5,280,000 3,098,974 n/a 2,800 −0.16
6 Barcelona  Spain 4,790,000 5,258,319 n/a 4,300 0.12
7 Berlin  Germany 4,105,000 6,563,194 n/a 2,900 0.01
8 Rome  Italy 3,950,000 3,717,956 n/a 3,400 0.89
9 Naples  Italy 3,700,000 2,201,789 n/a 3,600 0.01
10 Athens  Greece 3,475,000 3,051,899 n/a 5,000 0.29
11 Lisbon  Portugal 2,700,000 2,884,297 n/a 2,800 0.39
12 Manchester  United Kingdom 2,685,000 2,645,598 n/a 4,200 −0.03
13 Rotterdam–The Hague
 Netherlands 2,670,000 N/A n/a 2,700 0.39
14 Birmingham (West Midlands)  United Kingdom 2,550,000 2,514,596 n/a 4,200 −0.03
15 Budapest  Hungary 2,500,000 1,713,903 n/a 1,900 −0.19
16 Warsaw  Poland 2,280,000 1,722,310 n/a 3,200 0.67
17 Katowice (Katowice urban area)  Poland 2,175,000 n/a 2,573,159 3,300 0.11
18 Cologne-Bonn  Germany 2,165,000 N/A n/a 2,300 0.50
19 Brussels  Belgium 2,120,000 2,044,993 n/a 2,600 0.02[4]
20 Bucharest  Romania 2,115,000 1,867,724 n/a 6,500 0.10[4]
21 Hamburg  Germany 2,105,000 1,830,673 n/a 2,700 0.43[4]
22 Munich  Germany 2,025,000 1,437,900 n/a 4,200 0.72[4]
23 Leeds-Bradford  United Kingdom 1,955,000 1,912,493 n/a 3,900 0.24[4]
24 Frankfurt  Germany 1,950,000 n/a n/a 3,000 0.50
25 Vienna  Austria 1,785,000 1,752,845 n/a 3,900 1.04[4]
26 Amsterdam  Netherlands 1,650,000 1,090,772 n/a 3,200 0.41[4]
27 Lyon  France 1,650,000 1,608,712 n/a 1,300 0.50[4]
28 Marseille  France 1,620,000 1,605,046 n/a 3,100 0.46[4]
29 Valencia  Spain 1,585,000 n/a 5,700 0.29[4]
30 Stockholm  Sweden 1,565,000 1,485,680 n/a 4,300 0.58[4]
31 Turin  Italy 1,530,000 1,764,868 n/a 4,100 −0.16[4]
32 Porto  Portugal 1,485,000 1,299,437 n/a 1,900
33 Stuttgart  Germany 1,395,000 n/a 2,900
34 Prague  Czech Republic 1,390,000 1,313,557 n/a 4,600 −0.07[4]
35 Sofia  Bulgaria 1,325,000 1,226,155 1,543,377 5,700 0.78[4]
36 Copenhagen  Denmark 1,290,000 1,268,052 1,900,000 2,700 0.04[4]
37 Glasgow  United Kingdom 1,235,000 1,222,955 n/a 3,300 0.07[4]
38 Helsinki  Finland 1,230,000 1,179,916 n/a 2,400 0.81[4]
39 Dublin  Ireland 1,158,000 1,169,371 n/a 2,500 1.14[4]
40 Sevilla  Spain 1,110,000 n/a 5,600
41 Lille  France,  Belgium 1,065,000 1,027,178 n/a 2,200 0.50[4]
42 Antwerpen  Belgium 1,015,000 n/a 1,500 0.05[4]
43 Nice  France 975,000 n/a 1,300 0.52[4]
44 Toulouse  France 965,000 n/a 1,100 0.72[4]
45 Bordeaux  France 960,000 n/a 700 0.60[4]
46 Nantes  France 900,000 n/a 1,100
47 South Hampshire  United Kingdom 895,000 n/a
48 Liverpool  United Kingdom 880,000 n/a 4,400 0.11[4]
49 Bergamo  Italy 860,000 n/a 3,300
50 Gdańsk (Tricity)  Poland 855,000 n/a 5,000
51 Florence  Italy 835,000 n/a 3,700
52 Thessaloniki  Greece 825,000 n/a 4,300 0.39[4]
53 Newcastle upon Tyne (Tyneside)  United Kingdom 800,000 n/a 4,200 0.16[4]
54 Bilbao  Spain 780,000 n/a 5,800
55 Nottingham  United Kingdom 765,000 n/a 4,200
56 Kraków  Poland 760,000 n/a 3,500
57 Dresden  Germany 740,000 n/a 2,200
58 Zaragoza  Spain 735,000 n/a 5,700
59 Catania  Italy 730,000 n/a 2,900
60 Palermo  Italy 730,000 n/a 6,000 0.12[4]
61 Málaga  Spain 725,000 n/a 3,600
62 Hannover  Germany 715,000 n/a 2,500
63 Sheffield  United Kingdom 715,000 n/a 4,000
64 Zagreb  Croatia 705,000 n/a 4,400
65 Łódź  Poland 690,000 n/a 5,000 −0.67[4]
66 Utrecht  Netherlands 690,000 n/a 3,900
67 Las Palmas  Spain 675,000 n/a 6,800
68 Nuremberg  Germany 675,000 n/a 3,000
69 Bristol  United Kingdom 660,000 n/a 3,900
70 Bremen  Germany 635,000 n/a 2,400
71 Wrocław  Poland 620,000 n/a 4,800
72 Genova  Italy 615,000 1,500,000 n/a 7,900
73 Belfast  United Kingdom 615,000 n/a 3,500
74 Padua  Italy 610,000 n/a 3,200
75 Leipzig  Germany 605,000 n/a 2,000
76 Riga  Latvia 605,000 n/a 2,900
77 Gothenburg  Sweden 590,000 n/a 2,700
78 Toulon  France 585,000 n/a 700
79 Mannheim  Germany 565,000 n/a 3,500
80 Liège  Belgium 560,000 n/a 1,900
81 Palma, Majorca  Spain 550,000
82 Vilnius  Lithuania 550,000 649,000 n/a 2,500
83 Santa Cruz de Tenerife  Spain 545,000
84 Aachen  Germany 545,000 n/a 1,500
85 Leicester  United Kingdom 545,000 n/a
86 Poznań  Poland 535,000 n/a 2,700
87 Bologna  Italy 530,000 n/a 3,400
88 Murcia  Spain 515,000
89 Grenoble  France 515,000 n/a 985
90 Saarbrücken  Germany 510,000 n/a 2,200
91 Douai-Lens  France 510,000 n/a 1,100
92 Edinburgh  United Kingdom 500,000

Top 20 urban areas by population

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Eurostat: Statistics on European cities. Retrieved 19 September 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Demographia: World Urban Areas. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Annual Population of Urban Agglomerations with 300,000 Inhabitants or More in 2014, by Country, 1950-2030 (thousands), World Urbanization Prospects, the 2014 revision, 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. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 United Nations: World Urbanization Prospects Archived 2007-03-10 at Archive.is
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