Urban areas in Finland

Finnish road signs indicating the start and end of an urban area

In Finland, an urban area (Finnish: taajama, Swedish: tätort) is defined as a cluster of dwellings with at least 200 inhabitants and may be a city, town or larger village. It is a purely statistical concept, not defined by any municipal or county boundaries.^[1]

The largest urban area in Finland is the Helsinki urban area with over 1.3 million inhabitants in 2019.^[2] It extends across Helsinki as well as ten other municipalities in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The second largest is the Tampere urban area with about 342,000 inhabitants in 2019,^[2] and the third largest is the Turku urban area with about 278,000 inhabitants in 2019.^[2]

The presence of urban areas is used to regulate traffic, with a default of 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph) speed limit inside an urban area and 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) outside. Each major road leading in or out of an urban area is marked with a road sign.