In area, the Republic of Austria is slightly smaller than Maine, Scotland, or Hokkaidō and home to an ethnically and culturally homogeneous population of eight and a half million people. Given that more than one fifth of its inhabitants are concentrated in the city of Vienna and its suburbs, the nation is also naturally unipolar in terms of both economic and cultural activity. Austria's constitutional framework nevertheless characterizes the republic as a federation consisting of nine autonomous federal states:[1]