Conurbation

Rin-Ruhr conurbation (Germany).

Randstad (Netherlands).

A conurbation is a region comprising a series of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical growth, merge together. For both geography and urbanism, the terms "conurbation" and "suburbancone" They have to do with the process and the result of the growth of several cities (one or more of which can lead the group) that can be integrated to form a single system that is usually hierarchical, or else the different units that compose it can maintain its functional and dynamic independence.

Thus, a conurbation is usually made up of several cities that differ functionally and organically, and each of them presents an organization of its own space. From the spatial point of view, the conurbation does not require the physical continuity of the built spaces, although it is frequent that the suburban areas of one and other cities contact each other, intertwining through roads. The peri-urban area, on the other hand, occupies all the space between cities. In this way, the conurbation reaches a regional scale, of the order of a few hundred square kilometers. The different cities that make up the conurbation have differentiated activities, their own dynamics, their own economic resources and the ability to attract investment, their own centre, periphery and suburban spaces, their own social groups and personality, a way of being and a culture that identifies them.

Etymology

This neologism is due to Patrick Geddes (Cities in evolution, 1915; in Spanish Ciudades en evolución), who tries to describe the growth, as a whole, of a group of cities, although the use that he initially gave it -closer to the idea of the general extension of the city- does not exactly correspond to the meaning that this term has subsequently had among geographers and urban planners.

Types of conurbations

The conurbation must be differentiated from the urban agglomeration, a phenomenon characterized by the expansion of a city, to which all the dynamics of the area are due, which affects several neighboring nuclei and municipalities, which are absorbed or suburbanized by the city to form a continuous whole in which there is only one organization of space (a center, a periphery, suburban areas and peri-urban spaces), although articulation points can be distinguished in the suburban area as sub-centers, corresponding to the main squares of suburbanized municipalities. In the agglomeration there is spatial continuity, but not functional or dynamic independence.

There are differences in the result and in the dynamics of the conurbation process between the countries of the first industrialization, in the case of the European conurbations, and those that appear in developing countries or in the third world, in the case of the conurbations from Iberoamerica. The conurbations of the first type correspond to a process of a regional nature associated with an industrial development model in which the initiatives spread throughout an area where several cities are capable of directing the transformation process. Those of the second case correspond fundamentally to the crisis of traditional rural society and are generated around an openly macrocephalic capital. There is no development of a regional nature, but mere urban growth supported by the demand generated by the increase in population, with abundant primitive tertiary and temporary jobs in construction and public works, which are accompanied by administration and professional services and with urban industry emerged under the protection of the market that is the concentration. A good example of this case is the urban system developed around Mexico City, where the impressive macrocephaly of the capital is added to a whole crown of cities that in many cases exceed one million inhabitants, such as Puebla or Toluca.

A third type of conurbation is the one formed by two or three neighboring cities whose development and growth ends up turning them into a system in which it usually happens that one of them is much larger than the other and dominates it, making it depend or turning it into a satellite city.

On the other hand, the phenomenon of conurbation is associated with a type of settlement in which there are many urban centers not too far from each other. The case of the Valencian Community in Spain, in the Alicante-Elche-Murcia complex, is a good example, although it could also serve as the basis for a new type, based on leisure and tourism, together with industry and agriculture of market. On the contrary, cities located in populated areas where the urban nuclei are very far from each other are forced to a considerable growth in order to originate conurbation phenomena, which explains the macrocephaly that usually characterizes them when they occur.. This is the case of Madrid, where only recently could we come to consider integrating cities such as Toledo or Guadalajara into the system.

A good Spanish example of conurbation is the group formed by Oviedo, Gijón, Avilés, Mieres and Langreo, in Asturias or the axis or metropolitan area of Santander-Torrelavega without leaving the Cantabrian Coast, in addition to the example cited in the Community Valenciana, the Cádiz-Jerez system. In Extremadura we can find the conurbanization of Don Benito-Villanueva de la Serena. Urban agglomerations are, on the other hand, Madrid or Bilbao.

Examples of conurbations

Conurbations in America

Conurbations in Europe

... [the] European project Urban Audit... is committed to the collection, estimation and publication of statistical data of socio-economic content to know and measure the quality of life (social welfare) in a certain number of territorial areas. The basic geographical unit for data collection is the city, although other territorial levels of supramunicipal and submunicipal scope have been defined. The list of cities covered by the project is selected from population density data and size of its urban centre. For Spain, it consists of 109 cities....

For its part, the conurbation (“Greater City” in English) is an urban delimitation proper to the project, necessary when the urban center extends far beyond the administrative limits of the city. A city is in such a situation if more than 25% of the population of its urban centre is located outside the city's municipal district. There are currently some 26 conurbations defined for the European Union, such as Paris, London, Athens, Lisbon, Milan, Naples or Dublin. In Spain there are currently only two defined ones: Barcelona and Bilbao. Population as of 1 January 2014: Conurbación de Barcelona 3.176.357 - Conurbación de Bilbao 777.787.

Other conurbations

• Delta of the river of the Pearls (considered the largest conurbation in the world)
• BosWash (continuous urbanized from Boston to Washington)
• San San San (continuous urbanized from San Francisco to San Diego)
• Tōkaidō (from Tokyo to Kōbe)
• Chicago - Milwaukee
• Pereira - Two cracks
• Valparaiso - Viña del Mar