The people : Germany

Germany has a population of approximately 82.0 million (including 7.3 million foreigners) and is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe (229 people per square kilometer). Only Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Northern Ireland have a higher population density.

The population is distributed very unevenly. The Berlin region has been growing rapidly since Germany’s unification and presently has more than 4.3 million inhabitants. More than 11 million people (about 1,1 00 per square kilometer) live in the Rhine-Ruhr industrial region, where towns and cities are so close together that there are no distinct boundaries between them.

Other concentrations are to be found in the Rhine-Main area around Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Mainz, the Rhinc-Neckar industrial region around Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, the industrial area around Stuttgart, and the catchment areas of Bremen, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Nuremberg/Furth.