largest urban areas of the european union

This is a list of all the urban areas of the European Union which have more than 750,000 inhabitants in 2005. This list was created in order to help solve the problem of widely diverging numbers that are found online, or even on Wikipedia, for the population of European cities. Numbers here have been compiled using a uniform definition and the limits of urban areas have been harmonized as of 2000, so they can be compared with each other. The list was designed in 2000, and figures for 2005 that are presented here have been calculated using the 1990-2000 population growth rate for each city. It is possible that a few urban areas may have experienced a very different growth pattern since 2000, in which case the figures given here would differ slightly from reality, but this should play only at the margin.

Important notes

This is a list of urban areas, this is not a list of metropolitan areas. Urban areas are contiguous built-up areas where houses are not more than 200 meters apart (discounting rivers, parks, roads, industrial fields, etc.). A metropolitan area is an urban area plus the satellite cities around the urban area and the agricultural land in between.
The majority of European statistical offices do not have a definition for metropolitan areas, they only define urban areas, therefore it is not possible to give figures for metropolitan areas. Figures for European metropolitan areas that can be found online, such as London 13 million inhabitants, Randstad 7 million, etc., are only rough estimates, and should be taken with a lot of care. France is one of the few countries in Europe that actually define metropolitan areas, and calculate their population. See aire urbaine for a definition and a list of French metropolitan areas.
Figures here are accurate, unlike rough estimates of European metropolitan areas than can be found online. However, figures here cannot be compared with figures of American metropolitan areas. The Census Bureau in the United States computes metropolitan areas, which are larger than urban areas. The Census Bureau does not compute urban areas, so that it is practically impossible to compare the size of American and European cities, except in the case of a few European coutries such as France where the statistical office computes metropolitan areas.
Please do not be surprised if you are used to higher figures for the cities listed below. London is frequently listed with 13 million inhabitants, Stuttgart is frequently listed with 2.2 million inhabitants, Munich with 2 million or more, etc. This is because figures here are only for urban areas, which are smaller than metropolitan areas. Urban areas can be computed by private people or institutions using maps and looking where the built-up area stops. 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, but the majority of European statistical offices do not define or compute metropolitan areas.

Urban areas of the European Union above 750,000 inhabitants

rban Area	Population	Annual change (1990s)
1 20px	Paris, France	10 136 000	0.21%
2 20px	London, United Kingdom	8 505 000	0.68%
3 20px	Ruhr area-Essen-Dortmund-Duisburg, Germany	5 214 000	– 0.14%
4 20px	Madrid, Spain	4 868 000	0.32%
5 20px	Barcelona, Spain	4 043 000	0.00%
6 20px	Berlin, Germany	3 764 000	0.12%
7 20px	Milan, Italy	3 695 000	– 0.35%
8 20px	Rotterdam-The Hague, Netherlands	3 345 000	0.50%
9 20px	Athens, Greece	3 247 000	0.37%
0 20px	Naples, Italy	2 887 000	0.00%
1 20px	Rome, Italy	2 605 000	– 0.85%
2 20px	Katowice, Poland	2 481 000	– 0.95%
3 20px	Cologne-Bonn, Germany	2 475 000	0.63%
4 20px	South Ruhr-Dsseldorf-Wuppertal, Germany	2 382 000	0.14%
5 20px	Lisbon, Portugal	2 377 000	0.27%
6 20px	Hamburg, Germany	2 293 000	0.54%
7 20px	Birmingham, United Kingdom	2 275 000	– 0.10%
8 20px	Manchester, United Kingdom	2 237 000	– 0.09%
9 20px	Budapest, Hungary	2 228 000	– 0.60%
0 20px	Warsaw, Poland	2 069 000	0.01%
1 20px	Brussels, Belgium	1 975 000	0.52%
2 20px	Vienna, Austria	1 893 000	0.25%
3 20px	Munich, Germany	1 656 000	0.20%
4 20px	Leeds, United Kingdom	1 520 000	0.35%
5 20px	Frankfurt, Germany	1 489 000	0.29%
6 20px	Lyon, France	1 465 000	0.46%
7 20px	Copenhagen, Denmark	1 417 000	0.39%
8 20px	Marseilles, France	1 374 000	0.29%
9 10px 10px	Lille-Kortrijk, France & Belgium	1 368 000	0.19%
0 20px	Valencia, Spain	1 362 000	0.10%
1 20px	Porto, Portugal	1 303 000	0.71%
2 20px	Stockholm, Sweden	1 273 000	1.08%
3 20px	Turin, Italy	1 267 000	– 0.95%
4 20px	Stuttgart, Germany	1 239 000	0.30%
5 20px	Amsterdam, Netherlands	1 196 000	0.64%
6 20px	Bielefeld, Germany	1 184 000	0.65%
7 20px	Prague, Czech Republic	1 161 000	– 0.36%
8 20px	Glasgow, United Kingdom	1 156 000	– 0.26%
9 20px	Liverpool-Birkenhead, United Kingdom	1 119 000	– 0.34%
0 20px	Antwerp, Belgium	1 094 000	0.27%
1 20px	Seville, Spain	1 072 000	0.56%
2 20px	Helsinki, Finland	1 071 000	1.46%
3 20px	Newcastle-Sunderland, United Kingdom	1 056 000	– 0.16%
4 20px	Dublin, Ireland	1 016 000	0.53%
5 20px	Lodz, Poland	972 000	– 0.59%
6 20px	Bilbao, Spain	919 000	– 0.35%
7 20px	Nice, France	912 000	0.47%
8 20px	Mannheim, Germany	907 000	0.29%
9 20px	Riga, Latvia	893 000	– 1.36%
0 20px	Florence, Italy	874 000	– 0.54%
1 20px	Toulouse, France	683 000	1.47%
2 20px	Bremen, Germany	861 000	0.27%
3 20px	Gdansk-Gdynia, Poland	849 000	0.16%
4 20px	Thessaloniki, Greece	828 000	0.67%
5 20px	Bordeaux, France	811 000	0.63%
6 20px	Cracow, Poland	794 000	0.37%
7 20px	Hannover, Germany	768 000	0.25%
8 20px	Nuremberg, Germany	765 000	0.24%
9 20px	Genoa, Italy	756 000	– 1.01%

Non-EU countries of Western Europe

Two countries of Western Europe that are not members of the European Union have urban areas that would be included in the list if they were member states.

Switzerland

Urban Area	Population (in 2005)	Yearly percent change (in the 1990s)
Zurich	1,011,000	+ 0.19 %

Norway

Urban Area	Population (in 2005)	Yearly percent change (in the 1990s)
Oslo	810,000	+ 1.09 %

Five fastest growing urban areas of the European Union

Urban Area	Yearly percent change (in the 1990s)
01- Toulouse, France	+ 1.47 % (+ 2.11 % in the 2000s)
02- Helsinki, Finland	+ 1.46 %
03- Stockholm, Sweden	+ 1.08 %
04- Porto, Portugal	+ 0.71 %
05- London, United Kingdom	+ 0.68 %

Five fastest declining urban areas of the European Union

Urban Area	Yearly percent change (in the 1990s)
01- Riga, Latvia	– 1.36 %
02- Genoa, Italy	– 1.01 %
03- Turin, Italy / Katowice, Poland	– 0.95 %
05- Rome, Italy	– 0.85 %

Sources

Geopolis research group at the University of Avignon, France for the majority of urban areas in the list
Population of urban areas provided by UK National Statistics for UK urban areas
Bank of Regional Data of the Polish Central Statistical Office for Polish urban areas
Latest 2004 population estimates of French cities by INSEE for revised figures for Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, and Bordeaux (the growth pattern in these urban areas during 1999-2004 is significantly higher than during 1990-1999)
Czech Statistical Office for Czech urban areas
Citypopulation.de for Latvian urban areas
Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finish, and Greek statistical offices for urban areas of these countries