Subdivisions
Rhine-Main is a polycentric metropolitan region, but the economic size and political weight of the city of Frankfurt sets it into a very monocentric relation with her commuter belt. Since the early 1970s the Frankfurt am Main metropolitan area (German: Ballungsraum Frankfurt/Rhein-Main) is defined as an area encompassing the cities of Frankfurt and Offenbach and their directly neighboring districts. The Regierungsbezirk Darmstadt of the state of Hesse could be seen as the next administrative division, as it lies entirely within the metropolitan region and further includes the cities of Darmstadt and Wiesbaden and a number of larger districts. Only on a level further, the metropolitan region also includes the cities and districts of Mainz and Aschaffenburg in the two adjoing federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Bavaria.
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