Urban regions

Statistics Austria defined the town regions on the basis of population census data for the fourth time. As in 1971, 1981 and 1991, a town region was defined in 2001 as a core zone with a high density of inhabitants. In the 2001 definition, the density of employees was also taken into account in addition to the density of inhabitants; an outer zone with a high proportion of people commuting to the core zone was also included. Although the basic concept of the formation of town regions remained unchanged, comparability with previous town region definitions was limited due to changes in the measured values and thresholds used as well as refinements to the geographic reference base for determining core zones. Nevertheless, the definition of town regions made on the basis of the 2001 Population Census was developed on the premise of maximum continuity with the previous definitions of town regions.

The results of this definition show a total of 34 town regions in which 5.15 million inhabitants (64% of the total population of Austria) lived on the reference date of the 2001 Population Census. Of this figure, slightly more than three quarters (3.94 million) lived in the core zones of the town regions, while around 1.21 million lived in the outer zones. Broken down by the population number in the core zones of the town regions, the largest town region by far is Vienna; a further three size categories can be identified:

• six city regions with more than 100 000 inhabitants in the core zone,
• nine medium-sized town regions with 40 000 to 100 000 core zone inhabitants, and
• 18 small town regions with fewer than 40 000 inhabitants in the core zone.

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