is a metropolitan region in the Kansai region of Japan encompassing the metropolitan areas of the cities of Kyoto in Kyoto Prefecture, Osaka in Osaka Prefecture and Kobe in Hyōgo Prefecture. The entire region has a population () of 19,302,746 over an area of . It is the second-most-populated urban region in Japan (after the Greater Tokyo Area), containing approximately 15% of Japan's population.
The GDP in Osaka–Kobe is $681 billion as measured by PPP , making it one of the world's most productive regions, a match with Paris and London. MasterCard Worldwide reported that Osaka is the 19th ranking city of the world's leading global cities and has an instrumental role in driving the global economy. If Keihanshin were a country, it would be the 16th-largest economy in the world, with a GDP of nearly $953.9 billion in 2012.
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Name
The name Keihanshin is constructed by extracting a representative kanji from Kyoto , Osaka , and Kobe . For the characters taken from Osaka and Kobe, the Chinese reading is used instead of the corresponding native reading. For the character taken from Kyoto, the Kan-on Chinese reading is used instead of the usual Go-on Chinese reading.
Definitions
thumb|[[Osaka Bay]]
Major Metropolitan Area
thumb|upright=2|Osaka
thumb|left|Keihanshin MMA with core cities in dark blue: Osaka, Sakai, Kyoto, Kobe
The Japan Statistics Bureau defines a Major Metropolitan Area or MMA () as a set of municipalities where at least 1.5% of the resident population aged 15 and above commute to school or work in a designated city (defined as the core area). If multiple designated cities are close enough to have overlapping outlying areas, they are combined into a single multi-core area. In the 2005 census, the designated cities used to define the Keihanshin MMA were Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Sakai has subsequently become a designated city.
This region consists of the combination of the metropolitan areas of Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, and Himeji, and additionally includes several periurban areas (particularly in eastern Shiga Prefecture) that are not part of the four metropolitan areas.
, the entire Keihanshin region had a population of 19,302,746 over an area of .
Urban Employment Area
thumb|left|Keihanshin map with <span style="color:red;">Osaka</span>, <span style="color:green;">Kobe</span>, and <span style="color:blue;">Kyoto</span> Urban Employment Areas as of 2015.
The Urban Employment Area is a metropolitan area definition developed at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tokyo. This definition is comparable to the Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States. The basic building blocks are municipalities.
The core area is the set of municipalities that contain a densely inhabited district (DID) with a population of 10,000 or more. The Urban Employment Area is called Metropolitan Employment Area, when its core area has 50,000 DID population or more. Otherwise, the area is called Micropolitan Employment Area. A DID is a group of census enumeration districts inhabited at densities of 4,000 or more persons per km<sup>2</sup>. Outlying areas are those municipalities where 10% or more of the employed population work in the core area or in another outlying area. Overlaps are not allowed and an outlying area is assigned to the core area where it has the highest commuter ratio.
This definition assigns a Metropolitan Employment Area to the following cities of the Keihanshin region: Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Himeji, and Wakayama. The lists below indicate which cities belong to which metropolitan area. Towns and villages are not listed.