ancient cities

Emerging metropolitan forms have been influenced
by the decentralization of commercial activities,
manufacturers, and, more recently, high
technology. The debate is therefore about the general
tendency of the phenomenon of decentralization
and concentration of activities and employment
in suburban centers. Is the pattern of contemporary
metropolis polycentric or dispersed?
The question is whether suburban spaces are
dependent or autonomous vis-à-vis the center. The
recognition of a polynuclear metropolitan pattern
based on the premise of territorial fragmentation
and decentralization of urban activities and jobs
shifting toward suburban centers—whether edge
cities, technoburbs, or technopolises—affects the
cohesion of metropolitan space. The dispersal of
activities and jobs erases the boundaries of the
metropolitan region, leading to the emergence of
“edgeless” cities. Exopolis has been proposed to
signify the end of the center’s domination and of
territorial cohesion. From this standpoint, the
question of the centralized or multinuclear metropolitan
region arises and whether it would not be
replaced by a decentered metropolis. Nonetheless,
postmodern urbanism claims that the periphery
dominates the center and that the metropolitan
region lacks precise boundaries. It is a collection of
units, disconnected and closed in on themselves.
Postmodern urbanism offers an interpretation
of metropolitan morphology based on the phenomena
of decentralization and spatial fragmentation.
Individual movements, their trajectories
through life, and their daily travels are determined
by preestablished frames of reference. The trajectories
come to life with daily journeys constrained
by distance and available modes of transport, yet
also reflecting a real capacity for autonomy and
freedom. These journeys form bundles or domains
where social interactions, governed by rules, ritual,
and conflicts, are exercised. From the perspective
of time-geography, the metropolitan region is a
structure articulated by the trajectories that individuals
move through during their everyday lives.
The gravity and ecological models have, each in
their own way, influenced the statistical definition
of metropolitan regions. For a dozen years, now,
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) has statistically delineated
metropolitan regions and thus produced an institutional
architecture as well as public policies on
Metropolitan Region
511
urban space. Thus, the great majority of member
countries (with the exceptions of Korea, Spain,
Japan, Mexico, and Turkey, which have no official
definition of metropolitan areas) use commuting
conditions (with variations in methods of calculation)
to assess metropolitan space. However, this
interest in the metropolitan scale in most countries
is recent. Canada and the United States have had
official definitions for almost 60 years, whereas for
other countries, such as Spain or Belgium, metropolitan
statistics are relatively novel. The absence
or presence of a statistical definition reveals the
degree of political interest in the notion of metropolitan
region and the efforts of recognition at
work in different countries.
Thinking Metropolitan: Political Usage
The ambiguity in definition and the transformation
of the concept following its political usage are
not unique to discussions about the metropolitan
region. However, the particularity of the conflict
relates to the political nature of the term and has
been exacerbated by globalization and the reorganization
of the state. The metropolitan region
might well be added to the political agenda as an
ideal place for enhancing national economic competitiveness.
This can be seen especially in the
notion of the city-region.
Thus, the term metropolitan region is not politically
neutral. It belongs to a body of discourse on
the need to harmonize the functional territory (i.e.,
the metropolitan region) and the political territory.
Therefore, it is a question of imposing a convincing
definition of the metropolitan region with the
goal of legitimizing an extended perimeter in
which urban cohesion can exist, renewing our
understanding of living together, and fostering
public policy. Borders have always been sources of
power. This is why the notion of metropolitan
region refers back to a territory of interactions.
The validity of political boundaries is always
implicit. Basically, the political territory and the
lived territory should be one and the same.
The transition from theory to politics is revealed
in the importance of census taking and the efforts
to define the metropolitan region statistically.
From the perspective of size, for example, one of
the factors pushing the Québec government in the
early twentieth century to merge municipalities in