Paris and its suburbs

The Paris and its suburbs is for historical and administrative reasons a reality difficult to encircle. Indeed, contrary to its counterparts foreign, like London or Berlin, the commune of Paris did not increase its limits since 1860. Consequently, there exists an obvious shift between political Paris (the Ville of Paris , which corresponds administratively to the common of Paris), known as also intramural Paris , and the geographical and human reality of the Métropole.

The commune of Paris

With a surface of 105  km ², Paris is small (London, for example, is 15 times wider). On the other hand, it concentrated 2  125  246  inhabitants in 1999, is a Population density of 20  137  hab/km ², one of highest of the world, and approximately 20% of the total population of the area Ile-de-France (for hardly 0,9  % of its surface). By excluding wood from Boulogne and Vincennes, the density of Paris reaches even 24  448  hab/km ².

The commune of Paris corresponds to a geographical unit and given history: the limits were traced by it in 1860 when Paris annexed some of the adjacent communes (like Montmartre, the Villette or Bercy) and correspond more or less to the layout of the old military area of Thiers, built in 1840. Even if this enclosure were quickly unused, it marked a long time a rupture in the urban fabric which is always visible nowadays in the “boulevards of the marshals”, a whole of boulevards girdling quasi-intégralement the city, and the ring road, circular expressway located inside the administrative limits of the commune. There exists even at certain places of the grounds located between the peripheral and the administrative limit very snuffed by the promoters of office since they preserve a Parisian address.

The small crown

One generally understands by “small crown” the communes immediately bordering on the town of Paris, like Saint-Denis or Neuilly-sur-Seine, even the three departments of the Hauts-de-Seine, the Seine-Saint-Denis and the the Valley-of-Marne. This zone was urbanized as of the end of the 19th century and is characterized by a very strong population density: it reaches 10.000 habitants/km ² in the Hauts-de-Seine, that is to say more than the majority of the centres town of the majority of the world metropolises (for example, Queens has 8  000  habitants/km ²). Moreover, this zone has important functions of command, in particular the district of Defense. Consequently, if she is administratively regarded as suburbs, she tends more and more to being, on the real level, a true expansion of the center town.

Policy

August 1st

Agglomeration of Paris

INSEE, the French official institute of production of statistics, uses the concept of “urban unit” to indicate a continuous built unit, i.e. where the various buildings are always separated from less 200  meters: it is about the official term which approaches more the EC what is a Agglomération. According to this organization, the urban unit containing Paris included/understood 396 communes and added up 9  644  507  inhabitants in 1999, of Melun to Mantes-the-Pretty. Three departments - apart from Paris - were completely included in this urban unit: Hauts-de-Seine, the Seine-Saint-Denis and the Valley-of-Marne.

Population of the Paris and its suburbs strictly speaking

The urban surface of Paris

The concept of urban unit, even if it is about an application of current criteria in town planning, always does not make it possible to integrate certain zones which are economically and geographically suburbs of a city, but which do not have a continuity of frame with this one (dormitory towns are an example). This is why INSEE uses the concept of “urban Aire”, definite like a whole of communes of only one holding and without enclave made up of an urban pole (an urban unit offering at least 5  000 uses) and of the communes of which more 40  % of the population works in this urban pole. In 1999, the urban surface of Paris contained 11  174  743  inhabitants, integrating all almost the Ile-de-France (except principal for the rural East of the Seine-et-Marne) and South of the department close to the Oise. It is this data which one can compare with the American concept of metropolitan area , and thus with the Grand New York.

The urban surface of Paris - which contains more inhabitants than the area Île-de-France itself - is located at the 22e row of the mégapoles the most populated world.

Evolution of the population of the urban surface of Paris

  • 1990: 10.561.573 (1155 communes)
  • 1999: 11.174.743 (1584 communes)

It extends on the near total of the Île-de-France and on part of the neighbouring areas (Center, Champagne-Ardenne, High-Normandy and Picardy), and the 14 departments following:

The urban surface of Paris east in its turn included in the urban Space of Paris, urban Space of which it is the component main thing.

Common belonging to the urban surface of Paris

Paris, commune and department, fact heard well part of its own urban surface. The totality of the communes of the the Essonne, of the Hauts-de-Seine, the Seine-Saint-Denis, the the Valley-of-Marne, the Val-d'Oise and the Yvelines (that is to say 370 communes) there are also included/understood. In fact, in Ile-de-France, only certain communes of the Seine-et-Marne do not belong to the urban surface of Paris:

These seven departments gather 9.806.087 inhabitants out of 6.096 km.

Administration

Principal French agglomeration, the Paris and its suburbs is subjected to a specific scheme. Thus, for Paris and the small crown (departments 75,92,93 and 94), safety and the police force is assured not by the mayors and the prefects, but by the Prefect of police.

The Paris and its suburbs is the only agglomeration of France of more than 100  000  inhabitants in whom the central city does not belong to any structure of Intercommunalité. Thus, so many communities of agglomeration form in small crown (as for example the Communauté of agglomeration Plaine Commune which gathers several cities of the Seine-Saint-Denis), there are few chances that the Paris and its suburbs obtains a structure of direction unified with short or even medium term.

See too

External bonds

  • INSEE - urban Unit of Paris in 1999

Random links:Insular gray fox | Results of the Cut of Africa of the footballing nations 2006 | Werner Grissmann | Positano | French cantonal elections of 1955 | WWKB