Functional Urban Regions and Larger Urban Zones in Europe and Greece

Abstract

In the European Union, Functional Urban Regions are important to economic and spatial planning; so is the existence of statistical data at this spatial level, both for the European and the national policies. Still, most European countries, like Greece, have no official delimitations for these zones - and, consecutively, no socio-economic data produced at this level. “Larger Urban Zones”, created by Eurostat's Urban Audit represent the only proxy to FURs that could be used for comparable studies, but this would demand an effort for a better harmonization and for consequent statistical series.