ABSTRACT
Seaports and airports are parts of metropolitan areas. In the context of organizing flows of goods, these gateways to the metropolis articulate the concentration and dispersal forces that allow such flows to be bundled and unbundled. This articulation of two opposing forces is what defines a gateway. But these metropolitan gateways are not uniform in terms of their geographical configuration, which depends on urban networks. These networks also shape the formation of hinterlands, giving rise to differences in how concentration and dispersal forces are articulated.
Four basic geographical configurations are put forward and systematically examined against the real world via a geographical and historical approach: the maritime metropolis, the maritime- or land-dominant metropolized inland corridor, the metropolized maritime conurbation, and the metropolized maritime range. These basic types combine with each other to form more complex geographical aggregations.
