ancient cities

510 Metropolitan Region
some located in the central areas and others on the
urban fringe. It is also identified with a plan to
constitute a coherent territorial structure operating
across several spatial scales. Yet, metropolitan
territorial coherence is contradicted by the emergence
of peripheral spaces, including “edge” and
“edgeless” cities, which deny the predominant role
of the center. However, the metropolitan region, a
territory experienced as a functional construct by
some but an abstraction by others, suffers from a
lack of political recognition in most countries.
Scholarship in the area of urban studies views the
metropolitan region, first and foremost, as the product
of a process of an urban area’s expansion. Thus,
it is a territorial entity in perpetual reconfiguration
with undetermined boundaries and lacking a welldefined
political structure. In contrast, it is simpler to
define the city, which remains a product of theoreticians
and national statistical offices, than the metropolitan
region. Nonetheless, metropolitan region
refers increasingly to a social entity that calls on a
regional identity and sense of belonging to a vaster
territory beyond the neighborhood or municipality.
Thinking Metropolitan:
The Theoretical Debates
The question of the legitimacy of the metropolitan
region is part of a long-standing debate about
size. A number of scholars of democracy, from
Socrates to the political scientist Robert Dahl,
have considered what the ideal size of the polity
(in the democratic sense of the term) should be,
however, the overwhelming growth of urbanization
in the course of the twentieth century has
shifted the debate from the size of the polity to
that of the city. Discussion now focuses on the
minimal population threshold for new urban
forms, whether the city in the strict sense, the metropolitan
region, or the megalopolis.
Size remains the lowest common denominator
when we seek an objective and universal way to
define types of urban areas. This is particularly the
case for studies comparing metropolitan regions,
which attempt to convey the complexity of urbanization.
This process is impossible to capture
empirically. Recognition of the significance of the
metropolis must be found elsewhere; specifically,
in the study of relationships among the activities
within the metropolitan area. Interdependencies
between the central city and its hinterland lead us to
reexamine our understanding of the metropolitan
region from a historical perspective and in terms of
the current challenges of metropolitanization.
A more fundamental debate exists between two
conceptions of metropolitan space, one based on
mobility characteristics, with commuting as an
indicator of regional structural coherence, and the
other focused on the ecology of social areas and,
most recently, on the polarization of socially segregated
areas. The goal is to describe an expanded
urban area with interdependent parts. The theory
of ecological expansion that was developed in the
wake of the Chicago School’s first publications is
drawn on to understand the meaning of the idea of
metropolitan community. This refers to a territory
composed of a center along with socially differentiated
social areas and suburbs that depend on the
center. These intrametropolitan territories are connected,
notably by daily commuter journeys, but
also through residential trajectories following the
invasion–succession model. This theory of metropolitan
expansion supposes that the urban area
grows to the extent that costs and commuting time
decrease, on one hand, and households gain
increased capacity for residential choice, on the
other. It seeks to determine the limits of the
metropolis and its structure, defined as the principal
axes ensuring interrelations between the center
and the periphery.
In this way, the metropolitan region is defined
as a space of flows, specifically in terms of the
level of commuting between residential areas and
central places. The pattern of these flows is a
function of the distance to be covered, accessibility
to places, and the structure of economic locations.
Residential choices are due to personal
preferences as much as to cost rationality and
travel times. This space of flows might also be
structured by social forces that condition relationships
between different parts of metropolises.
In regional science, the attraction of different
activity centers are considered as masses that differentially
generate flows, their direction, and
their spatial range. Spatial interactions arise from
the structure of economic locations and the effect
of the attraction of one sector for another as a
function of size and distance. These interactions
define the region’s edge by indicating where the
flows sharply dissipate.