Metropolitan area
A metropolitan area is a densely populated region that encompasses a central city and its surrounding suburbs and towns, characterized by significant social and economic integration. As urban sprawl leads to cities expanding beyond their political borders, these metropolitan areas emerge as a conglomeration of communities that share essential infrastructure and services, such as transportation, healthcare, and utilities. Unlike legally defined cities, metropolitan areas lack a singular governing body; instead, they operate through collaborative councils that address common needs and streamline services across member jurisdictions.
Metropolitan areas play a crucial role in addressing contemporary challenges, including economic growth, environmental sustainability, and public health. Over 50% of the American population lives in urban areas, and the dynamics within these regions can vary widely in terms of culture, income, and public services. Recent trends indicate that metropolitan areas are becoming hubs for job creation and entrepreneurship, reversing prior declines in economic dynamism. However, they also face the complexities of governance and the need for cooperative solutions to tackle issues like carbon emissions and water conservation, highlighting the importance of coordinated planning in an era of increasing urban density.
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Metropolitan area
Urban sprawl is the term demographers use for cities expanding beyond their politically defined borders. Residential housing, commercial spaces, and industrial buildings spread from the urban core to less populated—perhaps lower-taxed—areas around the cities. This results in new communities with a variety of names: suburbs, exurbs, collar counties, commuter belts, and townships. Small cities and towns, if not politically absorbed or merged, are linked by need for roads, utilities, schools, and other facilities. This conglomeration is called the metropolis, while the population centers around each city are called the metropolitan area. For example, the spread from Chicago, Illinois, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is on the verge of becoming a metropolis.
There is no overall governing body of metropolitan areas like a city mayor or township supervisor. Metropolitan areas have planning and operating councils sharing costs for highway and rail transport traffic, medical and healthcare facilities, water reclamation, garbage disposal, mental health services, and other shared concerns.
Background
The people of a metropolitan area may not share the same values, culture, education levels, crime rates, income status, employment opportunities, racial characteristics, or shopping and commuting patterns. Architecture and population densities differ one town to another. So do laws, building codes, rules, and regulations.
Designating a location as a metropolitan area serves two primary purposes.
First, metropolitan areas have planning and operating councils for highway and rail transport traffic, medical and healthcare facilities, water reclamation, garbage disposal, mental health services, and other shared needs. The cities and towns in the metropolitan areas share the costs of planning and operations, and many of the functions performed by metropolitan area planning and operations councils are eligible to receive federal funds, whereas individual cities are not eligible.
Second, the US government recognizes hundreds of metropolitan statistical areas having one or more adjacent counties, at least one city with more than fifty thousand residents, and sharing social and economic integration. Designation as a metropolitan statistical area is shown to impact transportation and utilities, retail trade, government services, finance, insurance, real estate, and employment growth, according to the report, Metropolitan Statistical Area Designation: Aggregate and Industry Growth Impacts by George Hammond and Brian Osoba.
Two overriding subjects of concern being addressed on the metropolitan area level in the United States and other countries are reducing carbon emissions and air pollution, and freshwater preservation. The issues are so complex that the solutions require institutional cooperation and financing across wide spans of geography.
Likewise, job creation is of paramount importance to quality of life. Metropolitan areas are at the heart of economic revival, or what the Kauffman Foundation calls "economic dynamism." Urban core areas are in decay. Job creation, wage growth, and productivity are finding fertile ground for start-up businesses in metropolitan areas. Start-ups across metropolitan areas are driving the reversal of the entrepreneurial downward trend that began in 2007.
The centrality, independence, and importance of local government are pillars of democracy. Local people determining their own fate remains a stalwart of political freedom, but in the age of urban sprawl, growing population density, and multiplicity of government density, metropolitan area planning and problem-solving are ever more important.
Overview
Metropolitan areas are not legal entities. They are not instruments of government invested with authority other than the good faith collaboration from member legal entities. The problems addressed are decided by and the decisions implemented in a manner of mutual need and cooperation. Planning and organization by metropolitan area commissions are charged with cutting duplication of functions and streamlining overlapping jurisdictional disputes.
More than 50 percent of American residents live in urban areas. They are separated by farmland and uninhabited areas, suburbs, and small cities and towns—some unincorporated and part of a larger regional government. David Hamilton describes the spectacular rapid growth of urban America in its brief history in his 2014 book Governing Metropolitan Areas: Growth and Change in a Networked Age. Much of it was spurred by industrialization, the desire to leave the hard life of farming, farm financial failures, and disintegrating family life from wars and poverty. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century mass immigration also contributed to urbanization.
The move from locally controlled and independent rural communities to urban areas has been just as fast from urban to metropolitan areas when populations exceeded fifty thousand, beginning in 1949.
Statistically identifiable strides have been made improving health-care delivery, effectively and efficiently managing hospital construction and hi-tech medical-care costs; school construction and delivery of education; hazardous waste, air, and water pollution control; air and rail transportation; infrastructure improvements; and waterway management.
One of the most effective and successful metropolitan area management authorities is the Portland, Oregon, management of the urban growth boundary. It is obliged to manage roads, water, and sewer systems; parks, schools, and fire and police services. It also protects farmlands and forests from urban sprawl. The Portland area urban growth boundary has expanded three dozen times since inception.
Another example is from a study of stroke victims who show better outcomes when care is provided by two large metropolitan area hospitals in England. Researchers conclude stroke patients have access to more tests and services in these facilities and, therefore, are more likely to benefit from a wide range of clinical interventions.
It is not clear how much longer metropolitan areas will go without establishing governance to require—rather than rely on push and pull—local elected officials to move on certain region-wide issues. Greater Manchester, England, is the first metropolitan area with plans for its own (currently interim) mayor. The experiment hopes to realize budget expenditure cuts approaching 40 percent. Less money will mean fewer local government jobs, less power and influence for elected officials, and sacrificed services tailored for local needs. The shift in England is an ominous portent for local authorities in metropolitan areas.
Changes in government and management are coming to the areas with larger and denser populations at a time when public budgets are under great stress. Increasing pressure for centralization in the hands of metropolitan area administrations will be likely.
Bibliography
Chatani, Satoru, et al. "Multi-Model Analyses of Dominant Factors Influencing Elemental Carbon in Tokyo Metropolitan Area of Japan." Aerosol and Air Quality Research, vol. 14, no. 1, 2014, pp. 396-405. AAQR, doi:10.4209/aaqr.2013.02.0035. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Gains, Francesca. "The Future of Metro Mayors—All Eyes on Greater Manchester." University of Manchester, 25 June 2015, blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/posts/2015/06/the-future-of-metro-mayors-all-eyes-on-greater-manchester. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Hamilton, David K. Governing Metropolitan Areas: Growth and Change in a Networked Age. Routledge, 2014.
Morelix, Arnobio, et al. "The Kauffman Index 2015: Startup Activity Metropolitan Area and City Trends." SSRN, 4 June 2015, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract‗id=2614604. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Ostrom, Vincent, et al. "The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Approach." American Political Science Review, vol. 55, no. 4, 1961, pp. 831-842. Cambridge Core, doi:10.2307/1952530. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Ramsay, Angus I. G., et al. "Effects of Centralizing Acute Stroke Services on Stroke Care Provision in Two Large Metropolitan Areas in England." Stroke, vol. 46, no. 8, 2015, pp. 2244-2251. AHA Journals, doi:10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.009723. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Squires, Gregory D., editor. Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences, & Policy Responses. Urban Institute Press, 2002.