Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto - Urban Areas and Agglomeration

Urban Areas and Agglomeration

Greater Porto is the second largest metropolitan area of Portugal, with about 1.7 million people. It groups the larger Porto Urban Area, the second largest in the country, assembled by the municipalities of Porto, Matosinhos, Vila Nova de Gaia, Gondomar, Valongo and Maia. A smaller urban area of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, which ranks as the six largest in continental Portugal. The new regional spatial planning program (PROT-Norte), recognizes both urban areas and engages in their development.

There are some intentions to merge the municipalities of Porto with Gaia and Matosinhos into a single and greater municipality, and there is an ongoing civil requisition for that objective. The government also started to discuss the merger of some municipalities due to conurbations, but give up. There's a similar idea for the conurbation of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, both municipalities decided to work as if both are the same city, cooperating in health, education, transports and other areas. Several municipalities of the metropolitan area also moved closer, and became a cohesive group.

The urban-metropolitan agglomeration known as Northern-western Urban-Metropolitan Agglomeration or Porto Metropolitan Arch is a regional urban system of polycentric nature that stretches far beyond the metropolitan borders, and includes circa 3 million people, which takes in other main urban areas such as Braga and Guimarães, the third and eighth largest cities (as defined by urban areas) of Portugal. One should also note that the entire region of Northern-western Portugal is, in fact, a single agglomeration, linking Porto and Braga to Vigo in Galicia Spain.