Functional areas (AAV) of Metropolitan France in 2020, broken down by communes (commune borders as of January 1, 2020):
Communes in the main population and employment centre of a functional area
Communes in a secondary population and employment centre of a functional area
Communes in the commuting zone of a functional area (functional areas with more than 700,000 inhabitants)
Communes in the commuting zone of a functional area (functional areas between 200,000 and 700,000 inhabitants)
Communes in the commuting zone of a functional area (functional areas between 50,000 and 200,000 inhabitants)
Communes in the commuting zone of a functional area (functional areas with less than 50,000 inhabitants)
Communes outside of functional areas
An aire d'attraction d'une ville[note 1] (or AAV, literally meaning "catchment area of a city") is a statistical area used by France's national statistics office INSEE since 2020, officially translated as functional area in English by INSEE,[2] which consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and the surrounding exurbs, towns and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the central urban agglomeration, as measured by commuting patterns.[1] INSEE's functional area (AAV) is therefore akin to what is most often called metropolitan area in English.
Definition
INSEE's AAV follows the same definition as the Functional Urban Area (FUA) used by Eurostat and the OECD, and the AAVs are thus strictly comparable to the FUAs.[2] Before 2020, INSEE used another metropolitan statistical area, the aire urbaine (AU), which was defined differently than the AAV, but the AU has now been discontinued and replaced with the AAV in order to facilitate international comparisons with Eurostat's FUAs.[2]
The functional area is a grouping of communes comprising a 'population and employment centre' (pôle de population et d'emploi in French),[2][3] which Eurostat calls "city" or "greater city" (depending on the FUA),[4] defined according to population and employment criteria, and an outlying 'commuting zone' (couronne in French),[2][3] which Eurostats calls "commuting zone" in English,[4] like INSEE, but zone de navettage in French[5] (unlike INSEE which calls it couronne), in which at least 15% of the working population work in the population and employment centre.[2]
List of functional areas (AAV)
The following is a list of the thirty five largest functional areas (AAV) in France, based on their population at the 2021 census. Population at the 2010 and 1990 censuses is indicated for comparison.
^Does not include Cannes-Antibes, which is a considered by INSEE a separate AAV, contrary to the old aire urbaine of Nice which included Cannes and Antibes.
^French part of the Geneva Functional Urban Area (2,292 km2 (885 sq mi))[11] which extends over Swiss and French territory, and had a population of 1,053,436 in Jan. 2021 (Swiss estimates and French census), 609,068 of them on Swiss territory and 444,368 on French territory.[12]