Nice metropolitan area

Nice metropolitan area (French: aire urbaine) as defined by INSEE is a residential area near Nice. It has 933,020 inhabitants and an area that covers a large strip of territory from the city of Villefranche-sur-Mer to the westernmost part of the Alpes-Maritimes département, including cities like Antibes, Grasse, Cannes and Cagnes-sur-Mer.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Nice was a 20,000 inhabitants city belonging to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. It grew steadily to reach 48,273 inhabitants in 1861, one year after annexation to the French Second Empire. By the end of the century, the population was over 100,000.

The urbanized area began to spread outside city limits, in La Trinité to the North, Villefranche-sur-Mer to the East and Cagnes-sur-Mer to the West. In the meantime, old cities, about 30 km to the West, like Grasse, Cannes, Antibes were experiencing regular growth as well.

After World War II, growth increased with the development of mass tourism and development of transports in the region. The consequences of the end of the Algerian War were also very important for the region's population, with many Pied-Noirs settling in the area. The growth in main cities decreased, while new town were growing very quickly like Saint-Laurent-du-Var, Vallauris, Le Cannet.

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