Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto Totally Explained

Everything about Porto Metropolitan Area totally explained

The Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto is a metropolitan area in coastal northern Portugal which covers 14 municipalities, including the City of Porto, making up the second biggest urban area in the country. The Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto is a union of metropolitan municipalities (Grande Área Metropolitana), larger than Greater Porto which is a NUTS III subdivision comprising 9 municipalities. It covers 1573,99 km² and had a 2006 estimated population of 1,581,694. Currently the most populous municipality is Vila Nova de Gaia.The most populous city is Porto.

History

The original Metropolitan Area of Porto was constituted by nine municipalities: Porto (the capital), Espinho, Gondomar, Maia, Matosinhos, Póvoa de Varzim, Vila Nova de Gaia, Valongo, and Vila do Conde. The process of enlargement to Santa Maria da Feira, Santo Tirso, Trofa, Arouca and São João da Madeira was approved in the Porto Metropolitan Assembly in January 8th 2005, and started being known as Grande Área Metropolitana do Porto (Greater metropolitan Area of Porto) and grouping 14 municipalities. Oliveira de Azeméis and Vale de Cambra had expressed their desire to join the Porto metropolitan community.

Government

The metropolitan area is governed by the Junta Metropolitana do Porto (JMP), headquartered in Avenida dos Aliados, in downtown Porto under the presidency of Rui Rio, also the mayor of Porto municipality, since the Municipal Elections held late 2005, when he succeeded Valentim Loureiro, mayor of Gondomar.
The Assembleia Metropolitana do Porto (Porto Metropolitan Assembly) is composed of 43 MPs, the PSD party has 20 seats, the PS 16, the CDS 3, CDU 3 and the BE, one.
Although the government has halted the intention of creating new metropolitan areas and urban communities, it's keen to ensure greater autonomy to Porto and Lisbon metropolitan areas.

Conurbations and agglomeration

Greater Porto is the second largest metropolitan area of Portugal, with about 1.7 million people. It groups the larger Porto conurbation (assembled by the municipalities of Porto, Matosinhos, Vila Nova de Gaia, Gondomar, Valongo and Maia, often considered by many as the true city of Porto), the second in the country, a smaller conurbation of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, which ranks as the six largest in Portugal.
There are some intentions to merge the municipalities of Porto with Gaia and Matosinhos into a single and greater municipality, and there's 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 metropolitan agglomeration 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 fifth and sixteenth largest cities 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.

Population

Municipality	Area	Population (2001)	Density
Porto	41.66 km²	263,131	6,316.2/km²
The rest of Grande Porto	775.74 km²	997,548	1,485.9/km²
Espinho	21.42 km²	33,701	1,573.3/km²
Gondomar	133.26 km²	164,096	1,231.4/km²
Maia	83.70 km²	120,111	1,435.0/km²
Matosinhos	62.30 km²	167,026	2,681.0/km²
Póvoa de Varzim	81.94 km²	63,469	774.6/km²
Valongo	72.99 km²	86,005	1,178.3/km²
Vila do Conde	498.2 km²	74,391	498.2/km²
Vila Nova de Gaia	170.82 km²	288,749	1,690.4/km²
in Ave	207.04 km²	109,977	531.2/km²
Santo Tirso	135.31 km²	72,396	535.0/km²
Trofa	71.73 km²	37,581	523.9/km²
in Entre Douro e Vouga	549.55 km²	181,294	329.9/km²
Arouca	327.99 km²	24,228	327.99/km²
Santa Maria da Feira	213.45 km²	135,964	637.0/km²
São João da Madeira	8.11 km²	21,102	2,602.0/km²
Total	1,573.99 km²	1,962,957	986.0/km²

Transportation

The Metropolitan area is keen to develop its transportation network. Porto Metro is a Rapid transit system that links the municipalities of Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia, Matosinhos, Maia, Vila do Conde and Póvoa de Varzim.
The Sá Carneiro International Airport (OPO), between the municipalities of Maia, Matosinhos,and Vila do Conde, is also one of its greater investments. It was transformed from an old and obsolete airport to a modern transportation centre, linked to Porto Metro. The JMP is also trying to pressure the government to add a TGV line to link Vigo in Galicia (Spain) to Porto Airport in order to make Porto the air traffic centre of the North-eastern Iberian Peninsula and to tighten its historical ties with that Spanish province.
Greater Porto is served by a great number of Motorways linking the main central areas of the metropolitan region and the region with other main Portuguese cities. Main Harbour:Leixoes(Matosinhos). Motorways:

A1 - Lisbon - Porto (North Motorway)
A3 - Porto - Valença
A4 - Porto - Amarante
A7 - Póvoa de Varzim - Vila Pouca de Aguiar
A20 - Carvalhos - Nó de Francos (CRIP - Porto Innner-Ring Motorway)
A28 - Porto - Caminha (Northern Littoral Motorway)
A29 - Estarreja - Porto
A32 - Oliveira de Azeméis - Porto
A41 - Perafita - Espinho (CREP - Porto Outer-Ring Motorway)
A42 - A41 - Paços De Ferreira
A43 - Porto (A-20) - Aguiar de Sousa
A44 - Gulpilhares (A29) - A20

Further Information

Get more info on 'Porto Metropolitan Area'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://greater_metropolitan_area_of_porto.totallyexplained.com">Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.