ABSTRACT
France is like Britain in having a very high population concentration in its capital city. Other countries, like Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, have a more even distribution of the urban population in which a number of major provincial cities share, without one dominant conurbation. This is significant because very large cities tend to have a very much greater dependence on public transport, especially rail-based transport, than their medium-sized equivalents. London, Paris and now again Berlin have very elaborate rail systems which have no equivalents elsewhere. The other major European cities really compare much more closely with major provincial cities in Britain and France, like Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, Lille, Lyon and Marseille.
