ABSTRACT
In the broadest sense, the metropolis is the means by which the historic differences between city and countryside are being eliminated. It would be precipitous, however, to declare the complete supremacy of the metropolis and the end of the historic division between city and countryside. By the end of the twentieth century, the century of the emergence of the metropolis, the majority of the world's population will reside outside the metropolis, and almost half will live in towns and rural areas. The dependent metropolis is based on inequality, and its proliferation means the reproduction of inequality. The restructuring of production, new communications technology and the revolution in information systems all make possible a drastically reordered metropolis, and ultimately a new international settlement order, perhaps highly decentralized and dispersed. The US has yet to develop a conscious national urban policy that acknowledges the metropolis as a whole, and gives sufficient aid to central cities, mass transit, and urban services.
