There are eleven metropolitan regions in Germany consisting of the country's most densely populated cities and their catchment areas. They represent Germany's political, commercial and cultural centres. The eleven metropolitan regions in Germany were organised into political units for planning purposes.
Based on a narrower definition of metropolises commonly used to determine the metropolitan status of a given city, only four cities in Germany surpass the threshold of at least one million inhabitants within their administrative borders: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne.
For urban centres outside metropolitan areas that are a similar focal point for their region, but on a smaller scale, the concept of the Regiopolis and the related concepts of regiopolitan area or regio were introduced by urban and regional planning professors in 2006.
Metropolitan regions
Sorted alphabetically:
- Berlin Metropolitan Region
- Central German Metropolitan Region
- Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region
- Hamburg Metropolitan Region
- Hannover-Braunschweig-Göttingen-Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region
- Munich Metropolitan Region
- Northwest Metropolitan Region
- Nuremberg Metropolitan Region
- Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region
- Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region (also covers the Cologne Bonn Region)
- Stuttgart Metropolitan Region
Big five
The five most important regions, collectively often called the Big Five, are frequently compared with other European metropolitan regions (EMR) in terms of investment and market development. They are (from north to south): Hamburg, Berlin, the polycentric Ruhr-Düsseldorf-Cologne region (collectively referred to as Rhine-Ruhr), Frankfurt and Munich. The Globalization and World Cities Study Group (GaWC) considers Frankfurt and Munich as "α" (alpha) global cities, whereas the others are classified as "β" (beta) global cities.
Each of them forms types of clusters and achieves varying levels of performance in areas, including business activity, human capital, information and technology exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement.
List
| rank | metropolitan region (EMR) | core cities | states | population as by EMR (2006) | population as by ESPON (2007) | GDP per capita in € (2006) | GMP in billion € (2006) | HQs of MNC (FG500) | annual passenger traffic (2008) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rhine-Ruhr EMR | K, DO, D, E, DU | NW | 11.47 million | 12.19 million | 29,486 | 338.21 | 13 | 30.80 million |
| Ruhr | DO, E, DU, BO | 5.26 million | 5.38 million | 25,266 | 132.90 | 4 | 2.30 million (DTM) | ||
| Düsseldorf | D, W, MG | 3.12 million | 3.07 million | 34,658 | 108.13 | 5 | 18.15 million (DUS) | ||
| Cologne/Bonn | K, BN | 3.09 million | 3.07 million | 31,448 | 97.18 | 4 | 10.35 million (CGN) | ||
| 2 | Frankfurt/Rhine-Main EMR | F, WI, MZ, DA, OF, HU | HE, RP, BY | 6.0million | 4.15 million | 35,000 | 193.20 | 4 | 57.44 million (FRA, HHN) |
| 3 | Berlin/Brandenburg EMR | B, P, CB | BE, BR | 5.95 million | 4.02 million | 21,981 | 130.78 | 1 | 21.40 million (TXL, SXF) |
| 4 | Stuttgart EMR | S, RT, ES, HN | BW | 5.29 million | — | 31,909 | 168.80 | 3 | 9.93 million |
| Stuttgart | S, ES | 2.67 million | 2.67 million | 35,492 | 94.76 | 3 | 9.93 million (STR) | ||
| 5 | Munich EMR | M, A, IN, LA, RO | BY | 5.20 million | 3.27 million | 39,155 | 203.61 | 7 | 34.73 million |
| Munich | M, FS | 2.59 million | 2.67 million | 47,943 | 124.35 | 7 | 34.73 million (MUC) | ||
| 6 | Central German EMR | L, DD, C, HAL, EF | SN, ST, TH | 4.36 million | — | 21,482 | 93.66 | 0 | 4.88 million |
| Leipzig/Halle | L, HAL | 1.50 million | 1.21 million | no data | no data | 0 | 2.46 million (LEJ) | ||
| Dresden | DD, PIR | 0.70 million | 0.88 million | no data | no data | 0 | 1.86 million (DRS) | ||
| 7 | Hamburg EMR | HH, HL | HH, SH, NI | 4.27 million | 2.98 million | 33,210 | 141.81 | 2 | 12.84 million (HAM) |
| 8 | Hanover-Braunschweig- Göttingen-Wolfsburg EMR | H, BS, GÖ, WOB, SZ, HI | NI | 3.91 million | — | 27,251 | 106.55 | 3 | 5.74 million |
| Braunschweig/Wolfsburg | BS, WOB, SZ | 1.00 million | 1.00 million | no data | no data | 1 | 0.10 million (BWE) | ||
| Hanover | H | 1.12 million* | 1.00 million | no data | no data | 2 | 5.64 million (HAJ) | ||
| 9 | Nuremberg EMR | N, FÜ, ER, BT, BA | BY | 3.51 million | — | 29,955 | 105.14 | 0 | 4.27 million |
| Nuremberg/Furth/Erlangen | N, FÜ, ER | 1.29 million | 1.58 million | no data | no data | 0 | 4.27 million (NUE) | ||
| 10 | Bremen/Oldenburg EMR | HB, OL, HBx, DEL, WHV | HB, NI | 2.37 million | 1.08 million | 27,046 | 64.10 | 0 | 2.49 million (BRE) |
| 11 | Rhine-Neckar EMR | MA, LU, HD, WO | BW, RP, HE | 2.36 million | 2.93 million | 29,891 | 70.54 | 1 | 0 |
| metropolitan regions in Germany | 57.74 million | 29,412 | 1,698.23 | 34 | 168.75 million | ||||
| Germany | 80.22 million | 28,212 | 2,322.20 | 37 | 191.02 million |
highest score of all metropolitan regions
highest score of all metropolitan areas