The Golden Banana or "sun belt" is a term used by analysts when discussing metropolization in a European context. It denotes an area of higher population density lying between Valencia in the west and Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

 in the east along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

, defined by the "Europe 2000" report from the European Commission in 1995 to be analogous to the so-called Blue Banana

Blue Banana

The Blue Banana is a discontinuous corridor of urbanisation in Western Europe, with a population of around 110 million. It stretches approximately from North West England in the north to Milan in the south...

. The region is a centre for information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 and manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

.