Randstad

The Randstad ; "Rim" or "Edge" City) is a roughly crescent-shaped conurbation in the central-western Netherlands, consisting primarily of the four largest Dutch cities ; their suburbs, and many towns in between, that all grew and merged into each other, containing almost half the country's population. Among other things, it includes the Port of Rotterdam , the Port of Amsterdam , and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol . With a population of approximately 8.4 million people it is one of the largest metropolitan regions in Europe,[b] comparable in population size to the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region or the San Francisco Bay Area, and covers an area of approximately 11,372 km2 .[a] The Randstad had a gross regional product of €397 billion in 2017, making it the third most productive region in the European Union, behind the Paris Region and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. It encompasses both the Amsterdam metropolitan area and Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area. It is part of the larger Blue Banana megalopolis.

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