Ignoring municipal subdivisions, the region has one urban area, Greater Porto, with about one million inhabitants, this includes Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia, Matosinhos, Maia and some large suburbs such as Rio Tinto and Ermesinde. There are three urban areas with about 100,000 inhabitants: Braga, Póvoa de Varzim-Vila do Conde, and Guimarães. The cities rural areas are excluded. However, in Northern Portugal these tend to be well-populated with dispersed settlement between the diverse cities of the region. All these human settlements are part of the same polycentric urban-metropolitan agglomeration with 2,99 million inhabitants (2001).