Urban area (France)
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An aire urbaine (literal and official translation: "urban area")[1] is an INSEE (France's national statistics bureau) statistical concept describing a core of urban development and the extent of its commuter activity. It was replaced by the concept "functional area" (French: aire d'attraction des villes), which uses the same definition as Eurostat's functional urban areas, in 2020.[2][3]
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Definition
The aire urbaine is built from France's nationwide interlocking administrative commune municipalities: when a commune has over 2000 inhabitants and contains a centre of dense construction (buildings spaced no more than 200 metres apart), it is combined with other adjoining communes fulfilling the same criteria to become a single unité urbaine ("urban unit"[4]); if an urban unit offers over 10,000 jobs and its economical development is enough to draw more than 40% of the population of a nearby municipalities (and other municipalities drawn to these in the same way) as commuters, it becomes a pôle urbain ("urban cluster"[5]) and the "commuter municipalities" become its couronne ("rim"[6]), but this only on the condition that the urban unit itself is not part of another urban cluster's rim. The aire urbaine is an urban cluster and its rim combined, or a statistical area describing a central urban core and its economic influence on surrounding municipalities.