Urban unit

In France, an urban unit (French: unité urbaine) is a statistical area defined by INSEE, the French national statistics office, for the measurement of contiguously built-up areas.

According to the INSEE definition [1], an "unité urbaine" is a commune alone or a grouping of communes which: a) form a single unbroken spread of urban development, with no distance between habitations greater than 200 m and b) have all together a population greater than 2,000 inhabitants.

[1] Communes not belonging to an unité urbaine are considered rural.

The French aire d'attraction d'une ville is equivalent to the functional urban area as defined by Eurostat, and represents a population and employment centre (urban cluster) and its commuting zone.

The zoning into unités urbaines and aires d'attraction des villes was last revised in 2020.