Redefining urban: a new way to measure metropolitan areas

Functional Urban Areas in OECD countries

www.oecd.org/gov/regional/measuringurban

1. Policies need reflect the reality of where people live and work (functional economic areas), as do the institutions that design and implement such policies.

2. Individual cities are interested in comparing their performance with “similar peers” around the world.

3. The connections between cities and with surrounding areas can lead to important changes in how and where economic production takes place, affecting national growth performance and quality of life.

Why do we need to redefine urban areas consistently across countries?

3 billion and counting of the world’s population live in some form of urban area. But around the world we don’t have the same definitions or understandings of what these urban areas are.

1. The new OECD classification, developed with the European Commission and member countries, identifies urban areas beyond city boundaries, as integrated labour market areas.

2. It is applied to 28 countries and identifies 1 148 urban areas of different size: small urban, medium-sized urban, metropolitan and large metropolitan

3. It allows comparisons among the different forms that urbanisation takes (densely populated centres and their hinterlands, sprawling, polycentric connected cities, etc.)

The OECD has developed a new approach to classifying urban areas

How does the new approach change our views of cities?

Many cities don’t match the city boundaries

Source: OECD calculations based on population density disaggregated with Corine Land Cover.

Urban systems in a country comprise cities of different sizeKorea

Old measurement method:3 Large metropolitan regions

New measurement method: 45 Functional urban areas of different size

Seoul

Daegu

Busan

Urban areas can be organised around one or more densely populated centres; the extension of the hinterlands varies greatly

Old measurement method:4 Large metropolitan regions

New measurement method: London

Seoul

Daegu

Busan

Urban cores

Hinterland

Leeds

Manchester

Birmingham

London

Luxembourg

Finland

Switzerland

Slovenia

Netherlands

Germany

United Kingdom

France

Sweden

Mexico

OECD 28

Austria

United States

Greece

Korea

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Small urban areas Medium-sized urban areas Metropolitan areas Large metropolitan areas

Two-thirds of the OECD population live in urban areas, but the urban experience is very different in each country

•Around 65% of the urban population in Korea live in large metropolitan areas; •In most European countries around 25% of urban population live in medium-sized areas

Percentage of urban population by city size (2008)

Small urban areas (pop be-tween 50,000 and 200,000)

Medium-sized urban areas (pop between 200,000 and

500,000)

Metropolitan areas (pop be-tween 500,000 and 1.5 mln)

Large metropolitan areas (pop above 1.5 mln)

-0.5%

0.0%

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%Functional urban area Core Hinterland

Population growth 2000-2006 by city type and core/hinterland (average yearly growth rates)

The urban population keeps growing, particularly in the hinterlands of large metropolitan areas

Urban population density and total population in selected metro areas (2008)

• Tokyo (Japan) and Napoli (Italy) have the same urban population density (around 8 500 people per m2 of urban area), even if Tokyo is 10 times bigger than Napoli in population size

0 1,500 3,000 4,500 6,000 7,500 9,000 10,500 12,000 13,500 15,000

Seoul Incheon (KOR)

1125.524967.396

2628.0213245.581

32685.656

6185.219

2650.467

671.845

1218.075

4334.215

New York (USA)

Los Angeles (USA)

697.645

3097.378

1356.482

urban population density (people per km2 of urban area)

The extension of land for urban use differs greatly and so does the urban population density

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

47.9%

68.6%

52.3%

35.7%

53.4%

70.1%

57.9%

42.7%

264 46 105 113# of metro areas

POPULATION

POPU

LATI

ON

POPU

LATI

ON

POPU

LATI

ON

GD

P GD

P

GD

P

GD

P

OECD (28) Asia (2) North America (3) Europe (23)

Percentage of population and GDP in metro areas (2008)

48% of the OECD population live in the 264 urban areas with a population of at least 500 000 (metro area) and these areas

account for 53% of OECD GDP

Metro areas tend to be wealthier than the rest of the economy

• GDP per capita premium is generally higher in metro areas (particularly in large metropolitan areas)•The GDP per capita premium varies by country (and continent)

OECD (28) Europe (23) North America (3) Asia (2)0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

11.1%

20.3%

4.7%2.0%

32.1%

46.5%

31.9%

9.3%

Metropolitan areas (pop between 500,000 and 1.5 mln)Large Metropolitan Areas (pop above 1.5 mln)

Per capita GPD gap between metro areas and the rest of the economy (2008)

Population and GDP per capita growth in the 61 fastest -growing metro areas (with GDP growth 25% higher than the country average GDP growth)

The most dynamic metro areas are driven by different growth models

-1% 1% 3% 5%-1%

0%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

6%

0.0114349694138654

0.0538307494902663

0.0134634172019304

0.0120570698860705

0.039125639261050.0402296507404363

0.0044358996161549

0.0251907305829953

0.0297015463944312

0.0138124476378472

0.00842829197322392

0.00310053630332586

0.01609224042073090.01609224010974230.0156751943323954

0.0181088330049342

0.00595090911984755

0.0389379220369066

0.0316412484882159

0.0266321628219847

0.02238738650351850.0233336414198826

0.0213408636005142

0.0129658705384839

0.0153066932306989

0.0280363585331598

0.0147419075504902

0.02216086207973980.0227434134072909

0.012940261722713

0.00969876178343565

0.0144034671576956

0.026872895048426

0.0284836445415282

0.00955130172221841

0.0524584963040951

0.0249827131165217

0.0316841928614080.0333131878967612

0.0386816104658023

0.06

0.0119786611699393

0.00655227315801169

0.0317682659935148

0.0141394189103705

0.02504716745573990.0242475243454924

0.00445061452288864

0.0446122583080753

0.014145251710294

f(x) = − 0.00290797167270171 ln(x) + 0.00773569928036483R² = 0.0484329762925358

Annual average population growth rate (2000-2008)

Annu

al a

vera

ge G

DP p

er c

apita

gro

wth

rate

(200

0-20

08)

moderate population

growth and high GDP per capita

growth

high population

and GDP per capita growth

high population growth and

moderate GDP per capita

growth

moderate population

and GDP per capita

growth

• Build a dataset of economic, social and environmental conditions for the 2 largest city types (Metro Areas Database)

• Adapt the definition of urban areas to emerging economies• Explore other economic functions beyond commuting to

identify different typologies of areas

• Analysing links between urbanisation and development• Opening up to further analysis on the potential of inclusive

growth in urban areas of different size and analysis of governance structure

With the objectives of:

What future developments are expected?

On line report: “Redefining urban: a new way to measure metropolitan areas” , OECD Publishing, 2012,www.oecd.org/gov/regional/measuringurban

Interactive maps and data on metro areas

www.oecd.org/gov/regional/statisticsindicators/explorer

Find out more:

For more information on OECD work on regional and metropolitan statistics, visit: www.oecd.org/gov/regional/statisticsindicatorsFor more information on OECD work on urban development, visit: www.oecd.org/gov/urbandevelopment