Talk:List of urban areas in the Nordic countries

Untitled
The statistics shown for the Swedish cities are mostly wrong, except for the top three, all are wrong. I am therefore adding the statistics from SCB, The Swedish statistical bureau hereunder.It shows how wrong it is since all these 50 would be in the list since they are all larger than the smallest of the cities on top Scandinavian list.

Topplista över Sveriges 50 största kommuner, 2007-12-31

Placering Kommun Folkmängd 1 Stockholm 795 163 2 Göteborg 493 502 3 Malmö 280 801 4 Uppsala 187 541 5 Linköping 140 367 6 Västerås 133 728 7 Örebro 130 429 8 Norrköping 126 680 9 Helsingborg 124 986 10 Jönköping 123 709 11 Umeå 111 771 12 Lund 105 286 13 Borås 100 985 14 Sundsvall 94 575 15 Eskilstuna 93 343 16 Gävle 92 681 17 Huddinge 91 827 18 Halmstad 89 727 19 Nacka 84 303 20 Södertälje 83 642 21 Karlstad 83 641 22 Växjö 79 562 23 Botkyrka 79 031 24 Kristianstad 77 245 25 Haninge 73 698 26 Luleå 73 146 27 Skellefteå 72 090 28 Kungsbacka 71 942 29 Järfälla 63 427 30 Solna 63 318 31 Karlskrona 62 338 32 Täby 61 633 33 Kalmar 61 533 34 Sollentuna 61 387 35 Mölndal 59 430 36 Östersund 58 686 37 Gotland 57 122 38 Varberg 56 114 39 Örnsköldsvik 55 284 40 Norrtälje 55 225 41 Falun 55 220 42 Trollhättan 54 300 43 Uddevalla 50 921 44 Nyköping 50 760 45 Skövde 50 197 46 Hässleholm 49 780 47 Borlänge 47 756 48 Lidingö 42 710 49 Motala 42 060 50 Tyresö 42 047

SCB —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.237.129.138 (talk) 12:40, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Somehow, this has turned into a completely ridiculous list. Actual "urban area" population numbers are listed for some cities, and municipality population numbers are listed for other cities. For example, the Bergen urban area population is almost 224,000, not 247,746 (which is actually the municipality population), and the population of the Stavanger-Sandnes conurbation is definitely not 212,000 - it is actually about 186,000. No, Sandnes is not included in its entirity, and yes, we do in fact have to use official statistics. There are probably a ton of other errors. The best would be to do as is done for the top 4 cities: write both the municipality population numbers and urban area population numbers (although it should say "municipality" instead of "city centre". --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 22:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

POV
This article is rather strange, as it doesn't include Iceland and Finland. In English usage, Scandinavia is usually taken to mean all five countries (have a look at guidebooks to Scandinavia, to take but one example). I'm well aware of the fact that some people hold Scandinavia to consist of only Denmark, Norway and Sweden but that is by no means the only accepted version. JdeJ (talk) 10:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The discussion about the definition of Scandinavia is better to take at Talk:Scandinavia. But as anyone can see, this seems to be something of a neverending debate. The best would probably be to just rename/move this article to List of cities in the Nordic countries by population, and include Iceland and Finland.--Pjred (talk) 15:30, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * (additional comment) I discovered that it already exist a List of cities in the Nordic countries. Perhaps the best would be to delete this article?--Pjred (talk) 15:41, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree JdeJ (talk) 16:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that this article should be renamed and should include Iceland and Finland. I disagree that it should be deleted. It serves a useful purpose. --Tkynerd (talk) 17:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * What I meant by 'delete' is that there's no point in having two very similar lists with very similar names. There are already articles for a) List of cities in the Nordic countries and b) Largest urban areas in the Nordic countries. This gives basically only two solutions for this list. Either it stays as it is, or it has to get deleted. If this list stays, there's actually no idea to discuss whether to include Finland and Iceland or not. Because, if we do use the wider defintion, the list will basically have the same alignment as the already existing List of cities in the Nordic countries. And, again, two similar lists is no good idea. So, the only way that this list serves any purpose with its current name is if it's used for the tri-state definition of Scandinavia.--Pjred (talk) 20:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with JdeJ that "Scandinavia" as used in English includes Iceland and Finland; that being the case, I would support deleting this list in favor of List of cities in the Nordic countries. However, that is only because the Nordic-countries list also lists the cities by population, which I think is a very useful way to do this. --Tkynerd (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * How about just making this page a 'redirect' to List of cities in the Nordic countries (although that page needs some serious work - but that's another issue)? Is this an acceptable solution?--Pjred (talk) 23:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That strikes me as a good idea, but I'd like to see more folks weigh in on this before we do it. --Tkynerd (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Please be bold. --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 23:03, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge?
List of cities in Scandinavia by population, Largest metropolitan areas in the Nordic countries and Largest urban areas in the Nordic countries - does it make sense to have all three as separate articles? Or should they all be merged, possibly with different data for different definitions reflected in one and the same article? Tomas e (talk) 13:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, this article should be redirected to Largest metropolitan areas in the Nordic countries. No need to have so many similar lists, and the name "Scandinavia" is not well defined. In Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, it is usually meant to be Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but this is the English Wikipedia and English usage quite often employ "Scandinavia" as being equal to the Nordic countries. To take but one example, virtually every guidebook to Scandinavia in English includes all five Nordic countries.Jeppiz (talk) 02:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Largest metro areas and Largest urban areas should be merged into this article. Redirecting this to metro areas does not make sense - in Norway, we don't have a decent definition of "metropolitan area", for example. We have "economic regions" and "city regions" which are defined slightly differently and have different population counts, and they are typically huge compared to metropolitan areas in the rest of the world with a lot of rural land. Most importantly, "metropolitan area" is not defined consistently among the Scandinavian countries. The definitions of urban areas used by each country's statistical bureau are, however, very similar. Redirecting this to the metro areas list would also mean the loss of very useful information, since none of those lists include municipality populations - in Norway, at least, the cities are officially the municipalities and not the urban areas. --Aqwis (talk) 08:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That is entirely possible, but then the cities of Iceland and Finland still needs to be added to this article. Most speakers of English coming here will expect to find them. So what we could to is to use this article to build on, move it to List of cities in the Nordic countries and redirect those other articles to this one. Jeppiz (talk) 13:27, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Quite honestly, I had no idea that the issue of the definition of "Scandinavia" was this contentious, but it truly is, moving this to "List of cities in the Nordic countries" may be the best way to go. --Aqwis (talk) 17:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Should Largest metropolitan areas in the Nordic countries‎ be merged here, or the other way round? Spatulli (talk) 19:43, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Article moved
I've moved the article here. Nobody objected to the proposed move and looking back, there was unanimous support for moving already last year. The things that remain to do is to include cities in Finland and Iceland (I assume Reykjavik will be the only Icelandic city making the list) and to rewrite the introduction a bit. I'll get right to it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeppiz (talk • contribs) 17:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge suggestion based on AFD
Based on Articles for deletion/Largest metropolitan areas in the Nordic countries, I've flagged Largest metropolitan areas in the Nordic countries to merge here based on nom suggestion. Tag wasn't put so I've added with opening a discussion here. JForget 00:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Urban and metro not the same
Largest Urban and Metrolitan areas can"t be merged,  its not the same thing,  a Urban area is a much smaller area,  were a metropolitan area is much bigger,    and largest municipalitys can"t be merged eaither,   its deals with population within the aminisrative bounderives of the municipalitys. NOOOO MERGE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.196.3.105 (talk) 15:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

No merge
There will be no merge of the Urban and metropolitan area or municipalitys it is 3 very different things so NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO merge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.196.3.16 (talk) 20:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

No merge
You have to understand that there is at least 3 different ways for statistics to weight metropolitans in number of people: For the muncipality, for the urban area or for the metropolitan area. They are quite different. Therefore: No merge! Krgj (talk) 14:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Finnish part
Fixed the parts about Finland. It seems that who ever edited this before doesn't understand the difference between urban area and municipality at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inkogn (talk • contribs) 21:38, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

No merge, but updates required
I suggest not to merge the two articles.

The definition of "Urban Area" is not the same as the definition of "Metropolitan Area". The two definitions are commonly used in official statistics. Thus I recommend not to merge the two articles. Both definitions have its own purposes and should therefore also be available on Wikipedia.

I recommend to delete the comment in the article(s)regarding merge.

Generally the statistics should be updated for Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway in accordance with the regular updates for Sweden.

Magnus Gustafsson Stockholm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dataretriever (talk • contribs) 18:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

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Reykjavík
It looks like the population number given for Reykjavík is that of the metropolitan area. Even if an urban area number does not exist, you can not list the metropolitan area number instead, as they are different things. -- Nidator T / C 21:38, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Statistics Iceland does publish numbers for urban areas with the following defintion: The boundaries are found by concatenating addresses in a municipality within 200 m mutual distance. Sports arenas are included if needed. A 400 m zone is drawn around the localities thus found. Minimum population is 50 persons at the time of review. Statistics are published for the whole 5 year period, as well as the next 5 year period even if the population falls below 50. The Reykjavík urban area population is at 236,518 in 2022 according to that methodology. As far as I can tell this is very much a comparable method to the one used by the other Nordics except for the minimum of 50 people rather than 200 but that is irrelevant for the purpose of this list. --Bjarki (talk) 06:35, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I took the liberty of moving your reply. I think I understand now; Greater Reykjavik is the urban area with 236,518 inhabitants and the Capital Region is the metropolitan area with 240,882 inhabitants..? I think I was tricked because the numbers are so similar, but that is probably because Reykjavik doesn't have any larger urban centres surrounding it (and places like Reykjanesbær and Selfoss are too far away). I thought it was a shame that Iceland decided not to build the airport rail link, which I imagine would have brought Reykjanesbær into the Capital Region. -- Nidator T / C 10:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The Capital Region is defined by administrative boundaries and includes anyone living in the seven municipalities it contains. There has been no formal definition of a Reykjavík metro area based on commuting as far as I know. Clearly, the entirety of the Capital Region would always qualify as part of that metro area but unlike most cities in Europe there is a big gap an all directions to the nearest significant towns. There is some commuting from Keflavík in the west, Akranes in the north and and Selfoss in the east but probably not enough to meet formal definitions of being part of a greater metropolitan area with Reykjavík. Bjarki (talk) 07:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Horrible table format
The table here is well-nigh unreadable. Asa food rule of thumb, a table should include as little text possible. For an example of how a good table should look, go to List of urban areas in the United Kingdom. The table is not place for long and undue arguments about how the urban areas are defined. It should give the population, main municipalities and included, and that's it. If a discussion about definitions are needed, it should be separate from the table. Jeppiz (talk) 00:12, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Population numbers
Urban population numbers seem off. Looking at Helsinki's official wiki page, it's considerably smaller than Copenhagen's.

But I'm no sure, so won't change anything. 5.186.125.37 (talk) 17:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)