Official name
French Republic
Western Europe
ISO 3166-1


Paris is the capital and most populous city in France, with an official population of 2,206,488 (2015). The city is a commune and department, and the heart of the Île-de-France region (colloquially known as the 'Paris Region'), whose 2016 population of 12,142,802 represented roughly 18 percent of the population of France.

Montpellier is a city in southern France. It is the capital of the Hérault department. Montpellier is the 7th-largest city of France, and is also the fastest-growing city in the country over the past 25 years. In 2014, 589,610 people lived in the urban area and 275,318 in the city itself.


Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France. The municipality (commune) of Bordeaux proper has a population of 246,586 (2014). Together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Bordeaux is the centre of the Bordeaux Métropole. With 760,933 inhabitants (as of 2014) and 1,195,335 in the metropolitan area, it is the sixth largest in France.

Autolib’ is the first full electric and open-access public car sharing service in the city of Paris, inaugurated in 2011 and operated by the Bolloré Group. The concept was developed to complement the city’s bicycle sharing system, Velib’, and further improve sustainable urban mobility solutions.

The Sharing Cities “lighthouse” programme was launched in 2016 and it will be developed over the course of 60 months. Sharing Cities received over €24 million from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Its approach is focused on international cooperation between cities as a means to build smart cities together, scaling up common solutions to shared problems.

Parking a car is becoming increasingly difficult in city centres all over the world. In the city of Montpellier, a solution developed with Libelium’s “Connected Parking” technology has been implemented by Montpellier Mediterranean Metropolis, a public entity that promotes Internet of Things projects, and the company Synox.