AMERICA'S CHANGING METROPOLITAN REGIONS

ABSTRACT

America's metropolitan areas continue to serve distinct functionalnodal regions. For each region the metropolis is the single most important center of economic organization and culture diffusion. But the classic model of metropolis and region is changing. Business and migration linkages appear to be more national than regional. The regional metropolis is decentralizing and dispersing. The resource-based economy of the region has ceased to support most of the economic growth of the metropolis; meanwhile the metropolis lends increasing economic support to the surrounding region. The existing political-geographic framework is not suited to these changes. National policies are likely to be directed increasingly to management and organizational reforms which recognize both the nature and the inertia of the evolving urban-regional system, and aim to make it work better.

KEY WORDS:

• Decentralization of metropolis
• Intergovernmental fiscal transfers
• Metropolis
• Metropolitan functions
• Metropolitan region
• Population change
• Urban growth policy