ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects upon the review of metropolitan area standards undertaken in the United States. It outlines the many steps the review involved, starting in 1990 and continuing through a period of intense activity at the end of the 1990s. The chapter describes the main features of the revised standards and the rationale for the decisions behind them. This is followed by a glimpse into the workings of the new standards as afforded by a test with 1990 data, giving an indication of the changes likely when the 2000-based areas are announced in 2003. An account of unresolved issues emphasizes that the review forms part of a larger, continuing effort to improve depiction of the nation's settlement and activity patterns. The chapter describes the major effort that can be involved in the task of identifying human settlement structures, as well as provide insights into the types of conceptual and practical issues that have to be addressed in such an exercise.
