Upper Silesian metropolitan area

Upper Silesian metropolitan area obszar metropolitalny konurbacji górnośląskiej Slezská Metropolitní oblast
Country	Poland
Region	Silesian Voivodeship
Largest Cities	Katowice Sosnowiec Gliwice Zabrze Bytom
Area
• Metro	1,586,16 km2 (61,242 sq mi)
Population
• Metro	2,204,325
• Metro density	14/km2 (36/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)

Katowice in Silesian Voivodeship (Poland), the largest city in Upper Silesian metropolitan area.

The Upper Silesian metropolitan area is a metropolitan area in southern Poland and northeast Czech Republic, centered on the cities of Katowice and Ostrava in Silesia. Located in the three administrative units (NUTS-2 class): mainly Silesian Voivodeship, small western part of Lesser Poland Voivodeship and small east part of Moravian-Silesian Region.

The area lies within the Upper Silesian Coal Basin. Silesian metropolitan area (5.3 million people) with nearby Kraków metropolitan area (1.3 million^{[1][2][3][4][5]} people) and Częstochowa metropolitan area (0.4 million^[1][2][3] people) create a great metropolitan area covering 7 million people.

Statistics

Upper Silesian metropolitan area has a population of 5,294,000, with 4,311,000 (81.43%) in Poland (the Upper Silesian polycentric metropolitan area) and 983,000 (18.57%) in the Czech Republic (Ostrava Functional Urban Area).^[1] According to Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN) area is 5,400 km², with 4,500 km² (83.33%) in Poland and 900 km² (16.67%) in the Czech Republic.^[6]

The area consists of several Functional Urban Areas (FUA), each of which is defined as a core Morphological Urban Area (MUA) based on population density plus the surrounding labour pool, i.e. a metropolitan area. This area contains the following FUAs:^[1]

• Katowice FUA: 3,029,000 (see also Katowice urban area); within Upper Silesian Industrial Region
• Bielsko-Biała FUA and Cieszyn FUA: 647,000 (584,000 + 63,000); within north of Cieszyn Silesia and Bielsko Industrial Region
• Rybnik FUA and Racibórz FUA: 634,000 (526,000 + 109,000); within Rybnik Coal Area
• Ostrava FUA: 983,000; within Ostrava-Karviná Coal Area

Data may vary depending on the source, example for same the Katowice city exist sources for 3.5 million people;^[7][8] for the Rybnik - 507,000,^[3] while for the Ostrava - 1,153,876.^[2]

Economy

Historically, most of the area was characterized by heavy industry since the age of industrialisation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Except carbon, it also contains a number of other minable resources (methane, cadmium, lead, silver and zinc). Resources of coal to a depth to 1000 meters - about 70 billion tons, the conditions for the extraction - good.^[6]

See also

• Rhine-Ruhr
• Katowice urban area, part of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area
• Upper Silesian Industrial Region
• Silesian Metropolis, a political and economic association of local municipalities

References

Coordinates: 50°15′00″N 19°00′00″E / 50.2500°N 19.0000°E / 50.2500; 19.0000