An ''aire d'attraction d'une ville'' (or AAV, literally meaning "catchment area of a city") is a statistical area used by France's national statistics office INSEE since 2020, officially translated as functional area in English by INSEE, which consists of a densely populated

urban agglomeration An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbani ...

and the surrounding

exurb An exurb (or alternately: exurban area) is an area outside the typically denser inner suburbs, suburban area, at the edge of a metropolitan area, which has some economic and commuting connection to the metro area, low housing-density, and rela ...

s, towns and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the central urban agglomeration, as measured by

commuting Commuting is periodically recurring travel between a place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular o ...

patterns. INSEE's functional area (AAV) is therefore akin to what is most often called

metropolitan area A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban area, urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which share Industry (economics), industries, commercial areas, Transport infrastructure, transport network ...

in English.

Definition

INSEE's AAV follows the same definition as the

Functional Urban Area The functional urban area (FUA), previously known as larger urban zone (LUZ), is a measure of the population and expanse of metropolitan and surrounding areas which may or may not be exclusively urban. It consists of a city and its commuting zo ...

(FUA) used by

Eurostat Eurostat ("European Statistical Office"; also DG ESTAT) is a department of the European Commission ( Directorate-General), located in the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide statist ...

and the

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

, and the AAVs are thus strictly comparable to the FUAs. Before 2020, INSEE used another metropolitan statistical area, the ''

aire urbaine An ''aire urbaine'' (literal and official translation: "urban area") 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 c ...

'' (AU), which was defined differently than the AAV, but the AU has now been discontinued and replaced with the AAV in order to facilitate international comparisons with Eurostat's FUAs. The functional area is a grouping of

communes A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

comprising a 'population and employment centre' (''pôle de population et d'emploi'' in French), which Eurostat calls "city" or "greater city" (depending on the FUA), defined according to population and employment criteria, and an outlying 'commuting zone' (''couronne'' in French), which Eurostats calls "commuting zone" in English, like INSEE, but ''zone de navettage'' in French (unlike INSEE which calls it ''couronne''), in which at least 15% of the working population work in the population and employment centre.

List of functional areas (AAV)

The following is a list of the thirty five largest functional areas (AAV) in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, based on their population at the 2021 census. Population at the 2010 and 1990 censuses is indicated for comparison.

Notes

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Populated places in France Demographics of France Subdivisions of France INSEE concepts

Definition

List of functional areas (AAV)

See also

Notes

References