Blackwell Reference Online

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The multinucleated metropolitan region is an emerging spatial configuration characterized by massive regional sprawl and the presence of multiple specialized activity centers outside of the downtown central business district (CBD). This concept is useful for understanding both changes in metropolitan spatial structure and the dynamics of metropolitan life. It underlines the interactive character of the metropolitan region tied together by the complex webs of communications and traffic flows. As a pattern of settlement space, it suggests that urban life is organized into multiple centers spreading across an extensive metropolitan region. The idea of the multinucleated metropolitan region can be traced to the early Chicago School of urban ecology. Roderick D. McKenzie, among others, was a pioneer who extended the ecological approach to the study of the metropolitan region. In 1933 McKenzie published a seminal book, The Metropolitan Community , in which he investigated structural and historical changes in urban settlement space. Unlike advocates of other ecological models focusing on the internal structure of the city as a container, McKenzie called attention to the metropolitan region as an appropriate unit of analysis and explicitly highlighted metropolitanization and multinucleation as dominant social trends. As McKenzie pointed out, the pattern of metropolitan development has ... log in or subscribe to read full text