On the search for an urban definition at the European level

Abstract

At the European level (meaning in this context members of the European Union) one is trying to clarify the concept of the town and to define urban units. The need for statistics related to urban areas is clearly expressed, since 80‰ of the population of the Union live in urban areas, and several community policies are directed at or affecting urban areas.

But one main problem still remains: what is an urban unit? Sometimes it is used about administrative units of considerable size (100 000 inhabitants or more), embodying the whole or parts of what is traditionally thought of as a city. When talking about urban areas in general, the confusion is obvious. It is unclear to what extent separate small, densely built-up units are included, and how, for instance, suburban areas are treated. Is the urban unit administrative, morphological or functional? Since no common urban definition is implemented in Europe, there is a fundamental lack of comparability of urban statistics at this level.