ABSTRACT
An urban revolution has begun to take shape in the major city regions of the world. It will create a new and different industrial capitalist city and challenge nearly all existing models and theories of urban development and change. The concept of regional urbanization and the related notions of the 'metropolis unbound' and the 'end of the metropolis era' are products of these three intellectual movements. Peri-urbanisation has been identified by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies in France as a distinct urban category describing increasingly dense settlement beyond the former hinterland of compact European cities. In China, however, peri-urbanization is widely used to refer more objectively to rapidly growing zones in extended urban regions (EURs), where areas formerly classified as rural and agricultural increase in density, shift toward a manufacturing or service economy, and are reclassified as urban. The modern metropolis expanded outward through mass suburbanization and the decentralization of many economic activities.
