The geographical limits adopted for the metropolitan regions, known as the Functional Urban Regions or FURs, correspond to the economic sphere of influence wielded by the central town, that is to say to its labour pool, or in the case of polycentric regions, to the central towns.- Photo : Paris © Pattacini (Jean-Claude), IAU îdF

October 2002

One of the aims of the GEMACA II project is to produce comparative data on the economic evolution of the metropolises of north-west Europe.
A selection of the data gathered on 14 metropolises is presented in this document. It is original and innovative in that it covers economic regions which were defined using the same criteria with a view to making them as geographically comparable as possible.