Milan metropolitan area

Milan metropolitan area

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Milan metropolitan area

View from the Duomo di Milano towards the Castello Sforzesco and the Alps beyond.

The Milan metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as "Greater Milan" (), is the urban agglomeration centred around the city of Milan, Italy. The metropolitan area is strictly statistical and does not imply any kind of administrative unity or function. Greater Milan is Italy's most populus metropolitan area.

The spatial spread of the metropolitan area has greatly accelerated over recent decades. The growth of the many settlements around the core of Milan since the 1960s have defined the extent and pattern of the metropolitan area, and commuting flows suggest that socioeconomic linkages have expanded beyond the boundaries of the Province of Milan^[1]. A single, large and increasingly widespread conurbation with the city of Milan at its hub defines metropolitan Milan; however, the extent of the metropolitan area can vary greatly depending on the defining source.

Definitions
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Definitions

One definition of the metropolitan area is the local labour market system, an official definition based on commuting patterns used by Istat consisting of 115 municipalities (It. comune) with a total population of 2,975,754 (2001).^[2]

Another definition is synonymous with the province of Milan, with 3,869,037 inhabitants distributed over an area of 1,982 km²^[3]. This definition is also what the Eurostat Urban Audit program uses as the larger urban zone of Milan.^[4]

Finally, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) territorial review of 2006 takes a more inclusive definition based on socioeconomic patterns^[5]. They define the Milan metropolitan area as the Lombard provinces of Milan, Bergamo, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza and Brianza, Pavia, Varese and the Piedmontese Province of Novara. The overall population under this definition is about 7,400,000 people dispersed over an area of about 12,000 km².

The urban agglomeration physically extends to, and may include, some Swiss territories in southern Canton Ticino, although this is not recognized by OECD.