The Porto Metropolitan Area ( pt, Área Metropolitana do Porto; abbreviated as AMP) is a metropolitan area in northern

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

centered on the City of Porto, Portugal's second largest city.Fernanda Paula Oliveira (2009), The metropolitan area, covering 17

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

, is the second largest

urban area An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities ...

in the country and one of the largest in the European Union, with a population in 2011 of 2,421,038 in an area of 2,040.31 km².Instituto Nacional de Estatística
/ref> The Porto Metropolitan Area is a major economic engine in Portugal, with a very high HDI (

Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, wh ...

) and a GDP above the European average. Porto has been Portugal's largest manufacturing region since the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

and is home to many of the country's largest corporations.

History

The original ''Metropolitan Area of Porto'' was constituted by nine municipalities:

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...

(the capital), Espinho, Gondomar,

Maia Maia (; Ancient Greek: Μαῖα; also spelled Maie, ; la, Maia), in ancient Greek religion and mythology, is one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes, one of the major Greek gods, by Zeus, the king of Olympus. Family Maia is the daugh ...

, Matosinhos,

Póvoa de Varzim Póvoa de Varzim (, ) is a Portugal, Portuguese city in Norte Region, Portugal, Northern Portugal and sub-region of Greater Porto, from its city centre. It sits in a sandy coastal plain, a cuspate foreland, halfway between the Minho River, Minho ...

Vila Nova de Gaia Vila Nova de Gaia (; cel-x-proto, Cale), or simply Gaia, is a city and a municipality in Porto District in Norte Region, Portugal. It is located south of the city of Porto on the other side of the Douro River. The city proper had a population ...

Valongo Valongo () is a Portuguese municipality located in the District of Porto and 10 km from Porto, in the northern region of Portugal. The municipality area consists of 75.12 km² and 93 858 inhabitants (2011), and is subdivided into fou ...

, and

Vila do Conde Vila do Conde (, ; "the Count's Town") is a municipality in the Norte Region of Portugal. The population in 2011 was 79,533, in an area of 149.03 km². The urbanized area of Vila do Conde, which includes the parishes of Vila do Conde, Azurar ...

. The process of enlargement: * Arouca (joined 08/01/2005) *

Oliveira de Azeméis Oliveira de Azeméis () is a city and a municipality located in Porto Metropolitan Area in Portugal. Administratively, the municipality belongs to the District of Aveiro. The population of the municipality in 2011 was 68,611, in an area of 161.1 ...

(joined 01/09/2008) * Paredes (joined 12/09/2013) *

São João da Madeira São João da Madeira (), is a city and a municipality in northwestern region of the Portuguese Norte region. It's part of the larger Porto Metropolitan Area, located 30 km from central Porto. The population in 2011 was 21,713. With an area ...

(joined 08/01/2005) *

Santa Maria da Feira Santa Maria da Feira () is a city and a municipality in Aveiro District in Portugal, 23 km from central Porto. The population in 2011 was 139,309,Santo Tirso Santo Tirso () is a city and municipality located in the north of Porto Metropolitan Area, 25 km from central Porto, Portugal. In the region, the Ave Valley, there is a large center of textile industry. The population in 2011 was 71,530, in ...

(joined 08/01/2005) *

Trofa Trofa () is a municipality in the north of the Porto metropolitan area in Portugal, 18 km from central Porto. The population in 2011 was 38,999, in an area of 72.02 km². Trofa has a strong industrial park, with various types of industry ...

(joined (08/01/2005) * Vale de Cambra (joined (01/09/2008)

Government

The metropolitan area is governed by the ''Junta Metropolitana do Porto'' (JMP), headquartered in Avenida dos Aliados, in downtown Porto under the presidency of Hermínio Loureiro, also the mayor of

municipality, since the Municipal Elections held in 2013, when he succeeded

Rui Rio Rui Fernando da Silva Rio (born 6 August 1957) is a Portuguese economist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He was the Mayor of Porto from 2002 to 2013. Between 2018 and 2022, he was President of the PSD and Leader of the Opp ...

, mayor of

. The ''Assembleia Metropolitana do Porto'' (Porto Metropolitan Assembly) is composed of 43 MPs, the

PSD PSD may refer to: Educational bodies * Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, a Pre-K to 12th grade school for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania * Philippine School Doha, a Filipino scho ...

party has 20 seats, the PS 16, the

CDS The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

3, CDU 3 and the BE, one. Although the government has halted the intention of creating new metropolitan areas and urban communities, it is keen to ensure greater autonomy to Porto and Lisbon metropolitan areas.

Urban areas and agglomeration

Greater Porto is the second largest metropolitan area of Portugal, with about 1.7 million people. It groups the larger ''Porto Urban Area'', the second largest in the country, assembled by the municipalities of Porto, Matosinhos, Vila Nova de Gaia, Gondomar, Valongo and Maia. A smaller urban area of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, which ranks as the six largest in continental Portugal. The new regional spatial planning program (''PROT-Norte''), recognizes both urban areas and engages in their development.Plano Regional de Ordenamento do Território da Região Norte
- July 2009 There are some intentions to merge the municipalities of Porto with Gaia and Matosinhos into a single and greater municipality, and there is an ongoing civil requisition for that objective. The government also started to discuss the merging of some municipalities due to conurbations, but gave up. There is a similar idea for the conurbation of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, and both municipalities have decided to work as if both are the same city, cooperating in health, education, transports and other areas. Several municipalities of the metropolitan area also moved closer, thus becoming a cohesive group. The urban-metropolitan agglomeration known as ''Northern-western Urban-Metropolitan Agglomeration'' or ''Porto Metropolitan Arch'' is a regional urban system of polycentric nature that stretches far beyond the metropolitan borders, and includes circa 3 million people, which takes in other main urban areas such as

Braga Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...

and Guimarães, the third and eighth largest cities (as defined by urban areas) of Portugal. The entire region of Northern-western Portugal is, in fact, a single agglomeration, linking

and

Vigo Vigo ( , , , ) is a city and municipality in the province of Pontevedra, within the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. Located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, it sits on the southern shore of an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, the ...

in Galicia

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

Population

Transportation

The Metropolitan area is keen to develop its transportation network.

Porto Metro The Porto Metro ( pt, Metro do Porto), part of the public transport (mass transit) system of Porto, Portugal, is a light rail network that runs underground in central Porto and above ground into the city's suburbs. ''Metro do Porto S.A.'' was f ...

is a Rapid transit system that links the municipalities of

, Matosinhos, Gondomar,

and

. The Porto/

Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport or simply Porto Airport (formerly ''Pedras Rubras Airport'') is an international airport near Porto (Oporto), Portugal. It is located northwest of the Clérigos Tower in the centre of Porto, in the municipalitie ...

Pedras Rubras Pedras Rubras (Portuguese for ''Reddish stones'') is a Portuguese locality and suburb in the Moreira parish, in the Maia Municipality of the Greater Porto subregion. The Porto Airport (OPO) (Sá Carneiro International Airport Francisco Sá Carn ...

(OPO), between the municipalities of Maia, Matosinhos, and

, is also one of its greater investments. It was transformed from an old and obsolete airport to a modern transportation centre, linked to

. The JMP is also trying to pressure the government to add a

TGV The TGV (french: Train à Grande Vitesse, "high-speed train"; previously french: TurboTrain à Grande Vitesse, label=none) is France's intercity high-speed rail service, operated by SNCF. SNCF worked on a high-speed rail network from 1966 to 19 ...

line to link

in Galicia to

Porto Airport Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport or simply Porto Airport (formerly ''Pedras Rubras Airport'') is an international airport near Porto (Oporto), Portugal. It is located northwest of the Clérigos Tower in the centre of Porto, in the municipaliti ...

in order to make Porto the air traffic centre of the North-Western

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, def ...

and to tighten its historical ties with that Spanish province.

Greater Porto Grande Porto () or Greater Porto is a former Portuguese NUTS3 subregion, integrating the NUTS2 region of Norte, in Portugal. It was abolished at the January 2015 NUTS 3 revision. It corresponded to 11 municipalities out of 16, the other 5 in ...

is served by a great number of

Motorways A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

linking the main central areas of the metropolitan region and the region with other main Portuguese cities ( cidades portuguesas). Main Harbour:

Leixões The Port of Leixões ( pt, Porto de Leixões, ) is one of Portugal's major seaports, located 4 km north of the mouth of the Douro River, in Matosinhos municipality, near the city of Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city i ...

(Matosinhos). Motorways: *A1 - Lisbon -

(North Motorway) *A3 - Porto - Valença *A4 - Porto -

Quintanilha Quintanilha is a civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their comb ...

/ Espanha *A7 -

Vila Pouca de Aguiar Vila Pouca de Aguiar () is a municipality in the district of Vila Real in northern Portugal. Its population in 2011 was 13,187,Caminha ( Northern Littoral Motorway) *A29 -

Angeja Angeja is a civil parish in the municipality of Albergaria-a-Velha, in the Portuguese Centro region. In 2011, there were 2073 inhabitants in an area of . History The presence of Greeks and Phoenicians presuppose the Roman occupation in the territo ...

- Porto *A32 -

- Porto *A41 -

Perafita Perafita is a municipality in the ''comarca'' of Osona in Catalonia, Spain. In 2015, the municipality voted to join a proposed new comarca of Lluçanès Lluçanès () is a natural region transitioning between the Plain of Vic and Berguedà, in ...

- Espinho (CREP - Porto Outer-Ring Motorway) *A42 - A41 - Felgueiras *A43 - Porto (A-20) - Aguiar de Sousa *A44 - Gulpilhares (A29) - A20

References

External links

Official website
{{Coord missing, Portugal Porto Metropolitan areas of Portugal