ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a background on metropolitan theory by covering the literature relevant to large-scale urban development. It explores the features of a new urban unit of analysis, the megapolitan area, and the grouping of such areas into megapolitan clusters. The chapter explains megapolitan areas as smaller and more narrowly defined units of analysis, and provides evaluative reasoning. A metroplex is a large, extended metropolitan area that has two or more key anchor urban cores, such as Dallas and Fort Worth. Megapolitan areas and megapolitan clusters have a common economic foundation, as observed principally through commuting patterns. In 2003, however, the Census Bureau reconsidered the role of commuting in forming networks of metropolitan areas. Paralleling the development of urban realm theory were models of a new metropolitan form. Urban realms have their own subregional identities—in the Los Angeles region, for example, the South Coast and the Inland Empire.
