The New Metropolis: Rethinking Megalopolis

Lang R. and Knox P. K. The new metropolis: rethinking megalopolis, Regional Studies. The paper explores the relationship between metropolitan form, scale, and connectivity. It revisits the idea first offered by geographers Jean Gottmann, James Vance, and Jerome Pickard that urban expansiveness does not tear regions apart but instead leads to new types of linkages. The paper begins with an historical review of the evolving American metropolis and introduces a new spatial model showing changing metropolitan morphology. Next is an analytic synthesis based on geographic theory and empirical findings of what is labelled here the 'new metropolis'. A key element of the new metropolis is its vast scale, which facilitates the emergence of an even larger trans-metropolitan urban structure - the 'megapolitan region'. Megapolitan geography is described and includes a typology to show variation between regions. The paper concludes with the suggestion that the fragmented post-modern metropolis may be giving way to a neo-modern extended region where new forms of networks and spatial connectivity reintegrate urban space.