Functional urban area

Illustration showing the difference between the city, the functional urban area (Milan metropolitan area), and the metropolitan region of Milan.
Illustration of the delimitation process for the functional urban area (red outline) of Genoa (red fill) and its commuting zone (pink fill).

The functional urban area (FUA), previously known as larger urban zone (LUZ),[1] is a measure of the population and expanse of metropolitan and surrounding areas which may or may not be exclusively urban.[2] It consists of a city and its commuting zone,[3] which is a contiguous area of spatial units that have at least 15% of their employed residents working in the city.[4]

The FUA represents an attempt at a harmonised definition of the metropolitan area. Eurostat's objective was to have an area from which a significant share of the residents commute into the city, a concept known as the "functional urban region."[5] To ensure a good data availability, Eurostat adjusts the FUA boundaries to administrative boundaries that approximate the functional urban area.[6]

  1. ^ "Territorial typologies manual - cities, commuting zones and functional urban areas". Eurostat. Within the Urban Audit, (...) functional urban areas were previously referred to as 'larger urban zones'.
  2. ^ Position Statement on Cohesion Policy 2014–2020 Archived 2 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine, EuroMETREX. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  3. ^ "European cities – the EU-OECD functional urban area definition". Eurostat.
  4. ^ European Union/FAO/UN-Habitat/OECD/The World Bank (2021). "Applying the Degree of Urbanisation — A methodological manual to define cities, towns and rural areas for international comparisons — 2021 edition". Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. p. 52. doi:10.2785/706535. ISBN 978-92-76-20306-3.
  5. ^ "What is the Urban Audit?". Urban Audit. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009.
  6. ^ "Territorial typologies manual - cities, commuting zones and functional urban areas". Eurostat. The main building blocks are data for 1 km² population grid cells. […] The typology for functional urban areas is established at the level of local administrative units (LAUs). Once all grid cells have been classified and urban centres identified, the next step concerns overlaying these results onto LAUs […]