Urban unit
In France, an urban unit (fr: "unité urbaine") is a statistical area defined by INSEE, the French national statistics office, for the measurement of contiguously built-up areas. According to the INSEE definition , an "unité urbaine" is a commune alone or a grouping of communes which: a) form a single unbroken spread of urban development, with no distance between habitations greater than 200 m and b) have altogether a population greater than 2,000 inhabitants. Communes not belonging to an unité urbaine are considered rural.
The French unité urbaine is a statistical area in accordance with United Nations recommendations for the measurement of contiguously built-up areas. Other comparable units in other countries are the United States "Urbanized Area" and the "urban area" definition shared by the United Kingdom and Canada.
French unité urbaines with over 200,000 inhabitants
| Unité urbaine | Inhabitants (2006)[1] | Area in km² (1999)[2] |
Communes (1999)[3] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paris | 10,142,983 | 2,723.03 | 396 |
| 2 | Marseille-Aix-en-Provence | 1,418,482 | 1,289.59 | 38 |
| 3 | Lyon | 1,417,461 | 954.19 | 102 |
| 4 | Lille (excluding Belgian part) | 1,016,205 | 450.26 | 62 |
| 5 | Nice | 940,018 | 721.08 | 50 |
| 6 | Toulouse | 850,876 | 808.14 | 72 |
| 7 | Bordeaux | 803,155 | 1,057.03 | 51 |
| 8 | Nantes | 568,743 | 475.62 | 20 |
| 9 | Toulon | 543,065 | 713.15 | 26 |
| 10 | Douai-Lens | 512,463 | 489.14 | 68 |
| 11 | Strasbourg (excluding German part) | 440,264 | 222.43 | 20 |
| 12 | Grenoble | 427,659 | 324.78 | 34 |
| 13 | Rouen | 388,798 | 267.64 | 31 |
| 14 | Valenciennes (excluding Belgian part) | 355,660 | 506.51 | 61 |
| 15 | Nancy | 331,278 | 314.24 | 37 |
| 16 | Metz | 322,948 | 362.50 | 47 |
| 17 | Montpellier | 318,223 | 154.39 | 11 |
| 18 | Tours | 306,973 | 420.60 | 23 |
| 19 | Saint-Étienne | 286,399 | 231.22 | 17 |
| 20 | Rennes | 282,550 | 184.83 | 10 |
| 21 | Avignon | 273,360 | 507.91 | 22 |
| 22 | Orléans | 269,284 | 289.52 | 19 |
| 23 | Clermont-Ferrand | 260,658 | 180.77 | 17 |
| 24 | Béthune | 259,294 | 389.59 | 60 |
| 25 | Le Havre | 238,777 | 153.17 | 14 |
| 26 | Mulhouse | 238,637 | 215.03 | 19 |
| 27 | Dijon | 238,088 | 166.03 | 15 |
| 28 | Angers | 227,771 | 226.92 | 12 |
| 29 | Reims | 212,022 | 94.30 | 6 |
| 30 | Brest | 206,393 | 219.70 | 8 |
See also
- List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants
- urban area (France)
- aire urbaine, a related concept for urban and metropolitan areas
References
- ^ INSEE. Definitions and Methods. "Definition: Urban unit". Retrieved October 17, 2014.