Lens, Pas-de-Calais

Lens, Pas-de-Calais
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lens,_Pas-de-Calais".

Coordinates: 50°25′56″N 2°49′00″E / 50.4322222222, 2.83333333333

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Administration
Commune of Lens View of Lens
Location

Country	France
Region	Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Department	Pas-de-Calais (sous-préfecture)
Arrondissement	Lens
Canton	Chief town of 3 cantons
Intercommunality	Communaupole de Lens-Liévin
Mayor	Guy Delcourt (2001-2008)
Statistics
Elevation	27 m–71 m
Land area^¹	11.57 km²
Population^² (1999)	36,823
- Density	3,182/km² (1999)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	62498/ 62300
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

Lens is a commune in northern France, in the Pas-de-Calais département. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.

1 Metropolitan area
2 Economy
3 Miscellaneous
4 Famous Lensois
5 See also
6 External links

Metropolitan area

East of Pas-de-Calais (Béthune, Lens, Hénin-Beaumont)

Lens belongs to the communauté d'agglomération of Lens-Liévin (Communaupole) which consists of 36 communes, with a total population of 250,000 inhabitants. Lens, along with Douai, forms the metropolitan area (in French: aire urbaine) of Douai-Lens, whose population at the 1999 census was 552,682.

Economy

The city is an industrial and mining centre and has a long history of coal mining. Surrounding the town are many large slag heaps, evidence of over a hundred years of mining, which came to an end in the 1960s.