The
metropolitan area is a type of administrative division in
Portugal. Since the 2013 local government reform, there are two metropolitan areas:
Lisbon and
Porto. The metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto were created in 1991. A law passed in 2003 supported the creation of more metropolitan areas, under the conditions that they consisted of at least nine
municipalities (
concelhos) and had at least 350,000 inhabitants. Several metropolitan areas were created under this law (
Algarve,
Aveiro,
Coimbra,
Minho and
Viseu), but a law passed in 2008 abolished these, converting them into
intermunicipal communities, whose territories are (roughly) based on the
NUTS III statistical regions.