ABSTRACT
The metropolis in the twentieth century is not just a larger city, but a qualitatively new form of human settlement. The proportion of population in metropolitan areas is likely to increase to about one-third by the year 2000. The metropolis is indisputably a global settlement, an international phenomenon, a nodal point in the international division of labour. The value of the metropolis goes far beyond its direct economic usefulness to production, distribution and management. The metropolis has substantial social and cultural value, most notably its extensive and diverse opportunities for human interaction. The modern metropolis became an international phenomenon in the twentieth century, in developed and developing nations, capitalist, socialist and mixed economies. The dominant world metropolises represented huge concentrations of political, financial, and technological power, developing mainly in this very order: in time they were abetted by religious and educational concentrations of the same magnitude.
