This bar chart presents the estimated population density in the Ile-de-France region (Paris area), in France, in 2025, by district. It appears that the city of Paris counted approximately 19,509 inhabitants per square kilometer, making it the most densely populated department in the region.

The population density in France is unevenly distributed. The country, which enjoys a great variety of regions and landscapes, is becoming more and more urbanized, and big cities concentrate economic activities. Ile-de-France and overseas regions: the most densely populated French regions In 2022, Ile-de-France was the French region with the highest population density. According to the source, there were ******* residents per square kilometer in Ile-de-France. In 2025, more than ***** million people lived in this region, which contains the city of Paris and its greater suburbs. The overseas regions, such as Guadeloupe, Reunion, and Martinique, are the most densely populated French regions after the Paris region. On the other hand, Corsica was the least densely populated region in metropolitan France. However, it is Guyane, the largest overseas department, which has the lowest density in France, with only *** inhabitants per square kilometre. Largely covered by the Amazon jungle, this French territory is almost entirely populated along the coasts. The overall population density in metropolitan France reached ****** inhabitants per square kilometer in 2021, compared to ****** in 2007. Ile-de-France, and particularly Paris, is the center of most of the economic, political, and social activities in France. For instance, the ten most visited national French museums and galleries in 2017 were all located in Paris. In 2014, Ile-de-France was the French region that had the highest expenditure on Research and Development (19 billion euros). Regions in France Hauts-de-France, in the northern part of the country, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the southeastern part, were the second and the third most densely populated regions in Metropolitan France. The French southeastern coast is known for being highly urbanized, while its living conditions (sun, Mediterranean sea…) make it one of the most attractive regions to work and live in France. Hauts-de-France, which used to be one of the leading industrial regions of the country, now benefits from its geographical proximity to the heart of Europe: Brussels. Furthermore, rural regions like Centre-Val de Loire or Bourgogne Franche-Comté are less populous, and the share of the rural population in France is decreasing for years now.

In 2025, the Ile-de-France region, sometimes called the Paris region, was the most populous in France. It is located in the northern part of France, divided into eight departments and crossed by the Seine River. The region contains Paris, its large suburbs, and several rural areas. The total population in metropolitan France was estimated at around ** million inhabitants. In the DOM (Overseas Department), France had more than *** million citizens spread over the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion, Mayotte, and the South American territory of French Guiana. Ile-de-France: the most populous region in France According to the source, more than ** million French citizens lived in the Ile-de-France region. Ile-de-France was followed by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Occitanie region which is in the Southern part of the country. Ile-de-France is not only the most populated region in France, it is also the French region with the highest population density. In 2020, there were ******* residents per square kilometer in Ile-de-France compared to ***** for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the second most populated region in France. More than two million people were living in the city of Paris in 2025. Thus, the metropolitan area outside the city of Paris, called the suburbs or banlieue in French, had more than ten million inhabitants. Ile-de-France concentrates the majority of the country’s economic and political activities. An urban population In 2024, the total population of France amounted to over 68 million. The population in the country has increased since the mid-2000s. As well as the other European countries, France is experiencing urbanization. In 2023, more than ** percent of the French population lived in cities. This phenomenon shapes France’s geography.

The population density in France was 124.3 people per square kilometer in 2022. This number has been slowly increasing for the past ten years. Higher population density is associated with urbanization, but not necessarily economic growth. Comparative densities France’s population density is higher than the European average. It is higher than any region except Asia, as well as the total world population density. This is likely due to the number of large cities in France. The country has one of the largest urban populations in the world. This shapes the French economic and social landscapes; the cities become more expensive, but they also bring more economic opportunities. These opportunities attract people both from the French countryside and other countries who hope to benefit from such jobs. A tale of two countries For those who can afford it, Paris can be a cosmopolitan paradise. However, with the average price of a rental apartment twice that of most other French cities, few can afford to live in the richest parts of the city. This stark difference in costs implies that average annual wages should have a similar difference between cities. While this is not a perfectly even cause and effect, it gives some explanation for the increasing population density of France.

The Global Human Footprint dataset of the Last of the Wild Project, version 2, 2005 (LWPv2) is the Human Influence Index (HII) normalized by biome and realm. The HII is a global dataset of 1 km grid cells, created from nine global data layers covering human population pressure (population density), human land use and infraestructure (built-up areas, nighttime lights, land use/land cover) and human access (coastlines, roads, navigable rivers).The Human Footprint Index (HF) map, expresses as a percentage the relative human influence in each terrestrial biome. HF values from 0 to 100. A value of zero represents the least influence -the "most wild" part of the biome with value of 100 representing the most influence (least wild) part of the biome.

This bar chart presents the population of the city of Paris in France in 2020, distributed by district, also called arrondissement in French. It shows that the XVe arrondissement, located on the left bank of the river Seine, was the most populous district with more than 231,000 inhabitants.

Urban population growth has been constant for several decades in France. Between 1960 and 2023, it rose from 61.88 percent to 81.78 percent. The phenomenon of urbanization was more significant in the 1960s. Indeed, over this period, the rate of the French population living in cities increased by 10 points. The evolution was more weighted over the next 50 years, rising from 71.06 percent in 1970 to 80.98 percent in 2020.An increase in urbanization was accompanied over the same period by a sharp rise in the overall French population, from 55.57 million inhabitants in 1982 to around 68 million in 2024. Paris, an urban giant in France Like in the United Kingdom, the French-style centralized system has led to a high concentration of population around economic, financial, cultural and political centers, all located in the British and French capitals. London and Paris (and its conurbation) are among the largest urban centers on the continent, with Moscow being the most populous. This centralization of power has led to a very heterogenous distribution of population density. The Paris region has a density of more than 1000 inhabitants per km², which is ten times higher than the Haut-de-France region, the second densest region in Metropolitan France.This centralization of power attracts a strong French and foreign workforce. The French capital is by far the most populated city in France. If solely the municipality of Paris is taken into account, it had more than 2 million inhabitants in 2019, which is more than twice as many as in Marseille and four times as many as in Lyon, the country's second and third most populous cities. Future challenges for French cities Access to employment is no longer the only reason to settle in a town. Other factors come into play in the life choices of city dwellers. In 2019, more than 90% of the French estimated that the presence of green areas was important to settle or not in a district. The pollution level of the city was also considered in the choice of the city. In order to address these pollution problems, municipalities must resolve transportation issues on their own territory. Previously the king of the town, the car is increasingly losing ground to public transport in urban areas. Cities like Paris are relying more on public transport. Between 2011 and 2016, RATP and SNCF have built more than 60 kilometers of tramway tracks . Moreover, the construction of additional train and metro lines in the Grand Paris project aimed at better connecting the suburbs to each other without passing through intramural Paris.Making it easier to travel by bicycle is one of the options chosen by many conurbations to relieve congestion in their cities. Since the early 2000s, self-service bicycles have been a great success in France with more than 2400 bicycles available in Toulouse or 4000 in Lyon in 2017. A source of much tension between motorists, municipalities and cyclists, the sharing of the road between 4 and 2 wheelers has, however, been widely developed. In Strasbourg, for example, the municipality had around 1.04 metres of cycle lanes per inhabitant in 2017, the highest rate in France. However, the layout of cycle paths can be perilous and a majority of cyclists in France still feel unsafe on the road.

France Condominiums And Apartments Market size was valued at USD 5.14 Billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 10 Billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 6.55% from 2026 to 2032.

Key Market Drivers:

Urbanization and Population Density: Continued urbanization in France has increased demand for flats, particularly in big cities. According to INSEE (the French National Institute of Statistics), 80.4% of France’s population resided in cities as of 2022, with Paris alone having a population density of 20,641 people per square kilometer. This high urban concentration has a direct influence on the condominium market.

Housing Affordability Crisis: Rising property costs have driven more French people into flats and condos. According to the Banque de France, average home prices in France will rise by 6.8% in 2022, with Paris up 28.3% in the last five years. This price increase has made flats a more attractive alternative for first-time purchasers and young professionals.

From the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2025, the number of interim jobs in the city of Paris in France has decreased overall, from around 50,000 jobs to less than 40,000. The largest drop was reached in the first quarter of 2020.

With over 21,300 air services, the connection between Paris and Nice was the most served route between the French capital and domestic destinations in 2022. Toulouse was the second-most frequent connection from Paris, with around 19,600 flights connecting the cities in the same year.

Recent decades have been characterized by a rapid and steady urbanization of the global population. This trend is projected to remain stable in the future and to affect land use patterns in multiple ways. Monitoring and measurement concepts for urbanization processes have presented difficulties with the multitude of driving forces and variations in urban form as well as the assessment of outcomes of sometimes contradictory objectives for economic, social, and environmental policies. The monitoring frameworks that are employed with the aim of assessing the land use changes related to urbanization break down this complexity into singular dimensions that can be measured with individual indicators. Such monitoring allows planners and policy analysts to assess new urban growth against sustainable development criteria. Examples include compact city policies that allow urbanization to happen in suitable locations rather than laisser-faire urbanization that can happen regardless of environmental impacts and resource efficiency. In this context, we note that monitoring methods are most often designed for case studies in Europe or North America where urban structures are rather mature and consolidated. However, such monitoring can provide crucial information on urban development at a phase at which structures are currently evolving and can potentially still be modified. This is frequently the case in developing countries. Given this background, this paper presents an approach to simplifying the measurement of the land use changes related to urbanization with a new methodology. This paper condenses the needed measurement components into two dimensions: land use inefficiency and dispersion. The method can be used globally based on the newly available Global Human Settlement (GHS) layer that is available from the European Commission at no cost. In an initial application of the method to over 600 cities worldwide, we show the land use trends related to urbanization by continent and city size. In summary, we observe a consolidation of urban centers worldwide and continued sprawl on the outskirts. In European cities, a consolidation phase of urban structures began earlier, and cities are more mature and develop less dynamically compared to those in other regions of the world. More in-depth analyses of case studies present results for Paris, France, and Chicago, United States. In the case of Paris, the method helps to illustrate the growth pressures that led to massive urban sprawl on the outskirts with a continued densification of the inner city. In the case of Chicago, we observe a type of urban sprawl that goes along with the waves of suburbanization with population loss in the inner city and continued urban sprawl on the outskirts that are consolidated over time.

Since 1968, the population density in the city of Marseille, located in the south of France, has fluctuated and generally decreased. Indeed, there were about 3,628 inhabitants per square kilometer in 2021, compared with 3,694.7 in 1968. The year in which the population density was highest was 1975, and the year in which it was lowest was 1999.Marseille is the second largest city in France in terms of population, following Paris.

During the eighteenth century, it is estimated that France's population grew by roughly fifty percent, from 19.7 million in 1700, to 29 million by 1800. In France itself, the 1700s are remembered for the end of King Louis XIV's reign in 1715, the Age of Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. During this century, the scientific and ideological advances made in France and across Europe challenged the leadership structures of the time, and questioned the relationship between monarchial, religious and political institutions and their subjects. France was arguably the most powerful nation in the world in these early years, with the second largest population in Europe (after Russia); however, this century was defined by a number of costly, large-scale conflicts across Europe and in the new North American theater, which saw the loss of most overseas territories (particularly in North America) and almost bankrupted the French crown. A combination of regressive taxation, food shortages and enlightenment ideologies ultimately culminated in the French Revolution in 1789, which brought an end to the Ancien Régime, and set in motion a period of self-actualization.

War and peace

After a volatile and tumultuous decade, in which tens of thousands were executed by the state (most infamously: guillotined), relative stability was restored within France as Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, and the policies of the revolution became enforced. Beyond France's borders, the country was involved in a series of large scale wars for two almost decades, and the First French Empire eventually covered half of Europe by 1812. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated outright, the empire was dissolved, and the monarchy was restored to France; nonetheless, a large number of revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms remained in effect afterwards, and the ideas had a long-term impact across the globe. France experienced a century of comparative peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars; there were some notable uprisings and conflicts, and the monarchy was abolished yet again, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded or what was to follow. A new overseas colonial empire was also established in the late 1800s, particularly across Africa and Southeast Asia. Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, France had the second largest population in Europe (after Russia), however political instability and the economic prioritization of Paris meant that the entire country did not urbanize or industrialize at the same rate as the other European powers. Because of this, Germany and Britain entered the twentieth century with larger populations, and other regions, such as Austria or Belgium, had overtaken France in terms of industrialization; the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War was also a major contributor to this.

World Wars and contemporary France

Coming into the 1900s, France had a population of approximately forty million people (officially 38 million* due to to territorial changes), and there was relatively little growth in the first half of the century. France was comparatively unprepared for a large scale war, however it became one of the most active theaters of the First World War when Germany invaded via Belgium in 1914, with the ability to mobilize over eight million men. By the war's end in 1918, France had lost almost 1.4 million in the conflict, and approximately 300,000 in the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed. Germany invaded France again during the Second World War, and occupied the country from 1940, until the Allied counter-invasion liberated the country during the summer of 1944. France lost around 600,000 people in the course of the war, over half of which were civilians. Following the war's end, the country experienced a baby boom, and the population grew by approximately twenty million people in the next fifty years (compared to just one million in the previous fifty years). Since the 1950s, France's economy quickly grew to be one of the strongest in the world, despite losing the vast majority of its overseas colonial empire by the 1970s. A wave of migration, especially from these former colonies, has greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of France's population today, which stands at over 65 million people in 2020.

Cycling is becoming trendier. Although the progression of bicycle use between 2019 and 2020 in France largely depended on the size of the city, the expansion was positive in all categories. For medium-sized cities, between ****** and ****** and those with more than *********** inhabitants, a very sharp increase in bicycle use ranging from ** and ** percent was observed. This trend even increased to ** and ** percent, respectively, during non-containment periods.

COVID-19, a springboard for cycling? The COVID-19 epidemic has led to the implementation of social distancing measures in France and the bicycle is a means of transport that responds to these new constraints. Naturally, it is in cities where the population density is higher (such as Paris) that the most spectacular increase in bicycle use in France is taking place. Overall, it is in urban areas where cycling is making the most progress, with a ** percent increase in 2020 (excluding the confinement period).

Aware of this new craze and of the health issues at stake, the French government has released ** euros in 2020 for each citizen to help get his or her bicycle back into working order. This state participation is not unique to France. That same year, many European countries such as Finland raised public funds to invest in cycling.

Facilities for cycling in France The development of cycling in France requires new infrastructures to accommodate this new mass of cyclists. Even if this trend is national, investment depends on local authorities and cities. A city's policy and the choice of local elected officials will then have an influence on the implementation of infrastructure adapted to the practice. The conditions for cycling therefore vary from one French city to another. For example, the availability of bicycle paths per inhabitant in 2017 was ***** times higher in Strasbourg than in Nice. Opinion polls on bicycle use also vary greatly from one city to another. Among French cities with more than ******* inhabitants, Strasbourg, again, was named the most bike-friendly city in France. On the contrary, cycling conditions in Marseille are very poor, according to the inhabitants who find the safety conditions for cycling, as well as the comfort and the possibilities of parking bikes to be insufficient.