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Aire Urbaine




An ''aire urbaine'' comprises a city, its independent suburbs, as well as its satellite towns and cities separated by some agricultural land. Metropolitan areas in the US also include satellite towns and the agricultural land in between. This reflects the modern phenomenon of long commutes where people may live in towns separated from the core of the urbanized metropolis by some agricultural land, but still work in the core of the metropolis. In that perspective, a metropolitan area is no more conceived as strictly speaking the urbanized area centered on a city, but rather as a hub of towns and suburbs around a central urban core where people interact and commute.

The official definition of an ''aire urbaine'' is given by the (municipalities) situated on an unbroken and enclave-free tract of land, made up of (1) an urban core (''pôle urbain''), i.e. the ''communes'' of the contiguously urbanized area around the city center; and (2) the ''communes'' in the peri-urban ring (outside of the urban core) in which at least 40% of the resident population in employment works in the ''communes'' of the urban core or in the other ''communes'' of the peri-urban ring. A ''pôle urbain'' is a ''unité urbaine'' (see first paragraph) in which there exists at least 5,000 jobs and which does not belong to the peri-urban ring of another ''pôle urbain''.

Here is a list of the fifteen largest ''aires urbaines'' of France based on population at the 1999 census:




















Aire urbaine
Population
(March 1999)
Yearly percent change
(1990-1999)

01- Paris
11,174,743
+0.32 %


02- Lyon
1,648,216
+0.68 %


03- Marseille
1,516,340
+0.46 %

04- Lille
(figures do not include the part of Lille's
metropolitan area which lies on Belgian territory)
1,143,125
+0.32 %


05- Toulouse
964,797
+1.54 %


06- Nice
933,080
+0.51 %


07- Bordeaux
925,253
+0.67 %


08- Nantes
711,120
+1.10 %

09- Strasbourg
(figures do not include the part of Strasbourg's
metropolitan area which lies on German territory, see Eurodistrict )
612,104
+0.81 %


10- Toulon
564,823
+0.69 %


11- Douai - Lens
552,682
– 0.17 %


12- Rennes
521,188
+1.32 %


13- Rouen
518,316
+0.29 %


14- Grenoble
514,559
+0.65 %


15- Montpellier
459,916
+1.89 %



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