These densely populated regions contrast with very thinly populated areas such as the heathlands and moorlands of the North German Plain, parts of the Eifel Mountains, the Bavarian Forest, the Upper Palatinate, the March of Brandenburg and large parts of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The western part of Germany is much more densely populated than the eastern part, where less than one fifth of the population (15.5 million) live on roughly 30 percent of the national territory. Of the 19 cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants, two are in the eastern part of Germany.

Nearly one third of the population (about 26 million people) live in the 84 large cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. But the majority of people in the Federal Republic live in small towns and villages: nearly 6.6 million in municipalities with a population of less than 2,000 and 49.3 million in towns with between 2,000 and 100,000 inhabitants.