Population tables of world cities

World's largest cities

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World's largest metropolitan areas

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A conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urban agglomeration, in which transportation has developed to link areas to create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.^[1]

The term "conurbation" was coined as a neologism in 1915 by Patrick Geddes in his book Cities In Evolution. He drew attention to the ability of the (then) new technology of electric power and motorised transport to allow cities to spread and agglomerate together, and gave as examples "Midlandton" in England, the Ruhr in Germany, Randstad in the Netherlands, New York-Boston in the United States,^[2] the Greater Tokyo Area and Taiheiyō Belt in Japan and NCR of Delhi in India.

A conurbation can be confused with a metropolitan area. As the term is used in North America, a metropolitan area can be defined by the Census Bureau or it may consist of a central city and its suburbs, while a conurbation consists of adjacent metropolitan areas that are connected with one another by urbanization.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]} Internationally, the term "urban agglomeration" is often used to convey a similar meaning to "conurbation".^{[clarification needed][3]} A conurbation should also be contrasted with a megalopolis, where the urban areas are close but not physically contiguous and where the merging of labour markets has not yet developed.

Canada[link]

The "Golden Horseshoe" is a densely populated and industrialized region centred around the west end of Lake Ontario in Southern Ontario, Canada. Most of it is also part of the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. With a population of 8.1 million people, it makes up slightly over a quarter (25.6%) of the population of Canada and contains approximately 75% of Ontario's population,^[4] making it one of the largest population concentrations in North America. Although it is a geographically named sub-region of Southern Ontario, "Greater Golden Horseshoe" is more frequently used today to describe the metropolitan regions that stretch across the area in totality. The region incorporates Toronto, Mississauga, York, Peel Region, Hamilton, Oakville and Scarborough.

The National Capital Region (NCR) is made up of the capital, Ottawa, and neighbouring Gatineau which is located across the Ottawa River. As Ottawa is in Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec, this is a unique conurbation. Federal government buildings are located in both cities and many workers live in one city and work in the other. The National Capital Region consists of an area of 5,319 square kilometres that straddles the boundary between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The area of the National Capital Region is very similar to that of the Ottawa-Gatineau Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), although the National Capital Region contains a number of small neighbouring communities that are not contained within the CMA. When all the communities are added, the population is around 1,500,000. Ottawa-Gatineau is the only CMA in the nation to fall within two provinces.

British Columbia's Lower Mainland is the most populated area in Western Canada. It consists of many mid sized continuous urban areas, including Vancouver, North Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, and Coquitlam.

Germany[link]

Germany has three conurbations along the River Rhine, namely Rhine-Main, Rhine-Neckar and Rhine-Ruhr. The Rhine-Ruhr is a densely populated polycentric metropolitan region in the western part of Germany, comprising the three subregions of Ruhr Metropolitan Region, Düsseldorf-Mönchengladbach-Wuppertal Region and Cologne/Bonn Metropolitan Region. These three are all interlinked by a continuous urban settlement, while at the same time having different cultural and economic agendas.

Pakistan[link]

Islamabad-Rawalpindi

India[link]

The National Capital Region (NCR) is a name for the conurbation or metropolitan area which encompasses the entire National Capital Territory of Delhi as well as urban areas ringing it in neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. With a total area of about 33,578 km² (12,965 sq mi)it has an estimated population of 21,961,994 in 2007.

Japan[link]

The Taiheiyō Belt is the largest conurbation in Japan in every term, extending from Ibaraki Prefecture to Fukuoka Prefecture, running almost 1,200 km, with the total population of 82.9 million. The Greater Tokyo Area, also called Shutoken (the National Capital Region), is a metropolitan area in the Kantō region, with the estimated population of 35,676,000 in 2007, often referred to as the most populous and economically largest metropolitan area in the world.

Netherlands[link]

The Randstad, which is a densely populated area in the Netherlands consisting of a cluster of the four biggest cities of the country and several smaller cities, towns and urbanized villages, is another appropriate example of a conurbation. The Brussels-Capital Region in Belgium, by contrast, is an agglomeration centered on one city.

Poland[link]

Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia (Górnośląski Związek Metropolitalny) is the biggest conurbation in Poland, located in Upper Silesia, southern Poland. In GOP lives around 2 million people, which makes 5.26% of population of Poland.

South Africa[link]

Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni (East Rand), and Tshwane (greater Pretoria) are currently merging to form a region that comprises a population of 14.6 million people.^[5]

South America[link]

The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation, which also includes several Buenos Aires Province districts, constitutes the third-largest conurbation in Latin America, with a population of around 13 million, coming right after Mexico City and Greater São Paulo and followed by Greater Rio de Janeiro.

United Kingdom[link]

Industrial and housing growth in the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries produced many conurbations. Greater London is by far the largest urban area and is usually counted as a conurbation in statistical terms, but differs from the others in the degree to which it is focused on a single central area.^[3] In the mid-1950s the Green Belt was introduced to stem the further urbanisation of the countryside in England. Note that as used in the United Kingdom, the term "conurbation" is closer to the meaning of urban agglomeration.

The list below shows the most populous urban areas in the UK as defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Greater London Urban Area contains the whole of what is commonly called London, but ONS definitions divide London into a large number of smaller localities of which the largest is Croydon.

view talk edit view talk edit Largest urban areas of the United Kingdom 2001 Census[6][7][8]
	Rank	Urban area	Pop.	Principal settlement	Rank	Urban area	Pop.	Principal settlement
Greater London Urban Area West Midlands Urban Area	1	Greater London Urban Area	8,278,251	London	11	Bristol Urban Area	551,066	Bristol	Greater Manchester Urban Area West Yorkshire Urban Area
	2	West Midlands Urban Area	2,284,093	Birmingham	12	Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton	461,181	Brighton
	3	Greater Manchester Urban Area	2,240,230	Manchester	13	Portsmouth Urban Area	442,252	Portsmouth
	4	West Yorkshire Urban Area	1,499,465	Leeds	14	Leicester Urban Area	441,213	Leicester
	5	Greater Glasgow	1,199,629	Glasgow	15	Edinburgh	420,893	Edinburgh
	6	Tyneside	879,996	Newcastle	16	South East Dorset conurbation	383,713	Bournemouth
	7	Liverpool Urban Area	816,216	Liverpool	17	Reading/Wokingham Urban Area	369,804	Reading
	8	Nottingham Urban Area	666,358	Nottingham	18	Teesside	365,323	Middlesbrough
	9	Sheffield Urban Area	640,720	Sheffield	19	The Potteries Urban Area	362,403	Stoke-on-Trent
	10	Belfast Metropolitan Urban Area	579,554	Belfast	20	Coventry/Bedworth Urban Area	336,452	Coventry

United States[link]

A satellite image of Florida showing South Florida (bottom right), which consists of hundreds of municipalities, as a continuous agglomeration of lights

^{[clarification needed]}

New York Tri-State Area[link]

One example of a conurbation is the expansive concept of the New York metropolitan area (the Tri-State Region) centered on New York City, including 30 counties spread between New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, with an estimated population of 21,961,994 in 2007.^[9] Approximately one-fifteenth of all U.S. residents live in the Greater New York City area. This conurbation is the result of several central cities whose urban areas have merged.

San Francisco Bay Area[link]

Another conurbation is the combination of the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose and several minor urban centers, known as the San Francisco Bay Area.

Greater Los Angeles Area[link]

The Greater Los Angeles Area consists of the merging of several distinct central cities and counties, including Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, and San Bernardino. This area is also often referred to simply as Southern California or colloquially as SoCal (a larger region which tends to include San Diego).

Baltimore-Washington Area[link]

The traditionally separate metropolitan areas of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. have shared suburbs and a continuous urbanization between the two central cities (Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area).

San Diego–Tijuana[link]

The largest conurbation between the United States and Mexico, San Diego–Tijuana includes the two countries' busiest border crossing and a shared economy.^[10]

Chicago-Milwaukee[link]

Two major metropolitan areas (Greater Milwaukee, and Greater Chicago) that are linked through several midsized suburban and urban cities, mainly Racine, Kenosha, Waukegan, Buffalo Grove, Des Plaines, and the rest of the Northern Chicago suburbs between Chicago, IL and Milwaukee, WI.

Dallas-Fort Worth[link]

Three large cities, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington, make up this area. Each city is linked by touching city limits or suburbs. This area is also commonly known as the Metroplex and is included in the emerging megalopolis known as the Texas Triangle.

Detroit-Windsor[link]

The major U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan lies immediately across the Detroit River from Windsor, Ontario in Canada. In many respects—economically, historically, culturally, socially, and, of course, geographically—Windsor is more a part of Metro Detroit than of Ontario. The two cities and their surrounding suburbs are commonly referred to collectively as the Detroit-Windsor area. The Detroit-Windsor border is the largest commercial border crossing in North America and the busiest between the two countries. With a combined total population of nearly six million, Detroit-Windsor is the world's largest trans-border metropolitan area (since Hong Kong was returned to China.)

South Florida[link]

The entire tri-county area also known as the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area is now continuously urbanized along a roughly 100 miles (161 km) length of the Florida east coast as well as extending inland and continuing south of Miami as far as Florida City. Although this is generally all referred to as a single metropolitan area, not a conurbation, it is sometimes broken up into the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metros. Satellite images also show the metropolitan areas of Tampa, Florida, and Orlando, Florida, to be nearly connected along the highly developed I-4 corridor.

See also[link]

Look up conurbation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Amalgamation (politics)
• Combined Statistical Area
• Consolidated city-county
• Ecumenopolis
• Ekistics
• Globalization
• List of metropolitan areas by population
• Largest cities of the world
• Megacity
• Megalopolis
• Metropolis
• Suburbs
• The Sprawl
• Transborder agglomeration
• Urban sprawl
• Urban agglomeration

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Patrick Geddes - "Cities In Evolution"

Edward Soja - "Postmetropolis"