Regional Urbanization and the End of the Metropolis Era

Abstract

Interpreting urban restructuring reaches its climax here by identifying regional urbanization as the end-state of the restructuring process. Regional urbanization is what all the major cities in the world are trending toward today. Regional urbanization spells the end of the age of the modern metropolis and the rise of a new era in which the urban and suburban are intricately intertwined. The metropolis unbound erases the once clear urban-suburban boundary and fills the old metropolitan periphery with edge cities, outer cities, boomburbs, metroburbia, hybrid cities, urban villages, and other indicators of extended regional urbanization. This levels off the sharp density gradients of the past, marking the onset of the urbanization of suburbia. It also opens the urban to a global reach, passing through old metropolitan boundaries to larger regional scales. Extended regional urbanization is creating more than a dozen megacity regions of more than ten million, as well as huge megaregions like the Pearl River Delta, where the population reaches around 120 million. While the periphery grows, many inner cities are losing domestic populations, creating fears that drive city marketing efforts and increasingly competitive forms of urban and regional planning.