Metropolis

This article is about the political definition of "metropolis". For other uses, see Metropolis (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Metropolitan area.

Megacity

New York has garnered the nickname Metropolis to describe the city in the daytime in popular culture, contrasting with Gotham, sometimes used to describe New York at night.

Singapore is an entirely sovereign urban metropolis. It has been described by The Economist as the "world's only fully functioning city-state".

Tokyo is the world's most populous metropolis. Its skyline often consists of Mount Fuji in the background.

A metropolis (/mɪˈtrɒpəlɪs/) is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.

A big city belonging to a larger urban agglomeration, but which is not the core of that agglomeration, is not generally considered a metropolis but a part of it. The plural of the word is metropolises, although the Latin plural is metropoles, from the Greek metropoleis (μητρoπόλεις).

For urban centers outside metropolitan areas that generate a similar attraction on a smaller scale for their region, the concept of the regiopolis ("regio" for short) was introduced by urban and regional planning researchers in Germany in 2006.

Etymology

Metropolis (μητρόπολις) is a Greek word, coming from μήτηρ, mḗtēr meaning "mother" and πόλις, pólis meaning "city" or "town", which is how the Greek colonies of antiquity referred to their original cities, with whom they retained cultic and political-cultural connections. The word was used in post-classical Latin for the chief city of a province, the seat of the government and, in particular, ecclesiastically for the seat or see of a metropolitan bishop to whom suffragan bishops were responsible. This usage equates the province with the diocese or episcopal see.

In a colonial context, it is the "mother city" of a colony, that is, the city which sent out settlers. The word has distant roots in the colonial past of Ancient Greece with first usage in Middle English around the 14th century. This was later generalized to a city regarded as a center of a specified activity, or any large, important city in a nation.

As a cultural center

Metropolises are often described as cultural centers but this view has been challenged and disputed. Described as "a more sympathetic generation of scholars", some have defended the frequently maligned peasant class, noting that modern cultural attitudes may be evolving compared to the early Industrial age.

India

India (Republic of India) is the seventh-largest country by geographical area and the second-most populous country with over 1.3 billion people. The 74th Amendment to the Indian Constitution defines a metropolitan area as an area having a population of 10 Lakh or 1 Million or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified by the Governor by public notification to be a Metropolitan area. The important metropolises in India are Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Mumbai, Pune, Patna, Ranchi, Salem, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirapalli and Visakhapatnam.

Metropolis as a mainland area

In France, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands, the word metropolis (métropole (Fr.) / metrópole (Port.) / metrópoli (Spa.) / metropool (Dutch)) designates the mainland part of a country situated on or close to the European mainland; in the case of France, this means France without its overseas departments. For Portugal and Spain during the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire period, the term was used to designate Portugal or Spain minus its colonies (the Ultramar). In France métropole can also be used to refer to a large urban agglomeration; for example, "La Métropole de Lyon" (the Lyon Metropolis).

See also

• Megalopolis
• Metropolitan area

Other city types

• Global city
• Megacity

Lists

• List of largest cities

Planning theories

• New Urbanism
• Smart growth
• Transit-oriented development

Others

• C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
• Ekistics
• Settlement hierarchy
• Sustainable city

Further reading

• Census.gov, U.S. Census Bureau, About Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistics
• MetroForum.com, forum dedicated to discussions on metropolis
• Blog.ar2com.de, a podcast with a worldwide analysis of megacities (focus Latin America)
• E-geopolis.eu at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived October 27, 2009): research group, university of Paris-Diderot, France
• See Ronald Daus´s bibliography, researcher at the Free University of Berlin