Conurbation

[kon-er-bey-shuhn]

A conurbation is an urban area or agglomeration comprising a number of cities, large towns and larger urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric agglomeration, in which transportation has developed to link areas to create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.

The term "conurbation" was coined as a neologism in 1915 by Patrick Geddes in his book Cities In Evolution. He drew attention to the ability of the (then) new technology of electric power and motorised transport to allow cities to spread and agglomerate together, and gave as examples "Midlandton" in England, the Ruhr in Germany, and New York-Boston in the USA.

A conurbation can be confused with a metropolitan area. As the term is used in North America, a metropolitan area consists of many neighborhoods, while a conurbation consists of many different metropolitan areas that are connected with one another and are usually interdependent economically and socially. Internationally, the term "urban agglomeration" is often used to convey a similar meaning to "conurbation".

Examples of Conurbations

Randstad, The Netherlands

The Randstad, which is a densely populated area in the Netherlands consisting of a cluster of the four biggest cities of the country and several smaller cities, towns and urbanized villages, is another appropriate example of a conurbation. The Brussels-Capital Region in Belgium, by contrast, is an agglomeration centered on one city.

United Kingdom

Industrial and housing growth in the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries produced many conurbations. Greater London is by far the largest urban area and is usually counted as a conurbation in statistical terms, but differs from the others in the degree to which it is focussed on a single central area. In the mid-1950s the Green Belt was introduced to stem the further urbanisation of the countryside in England.

The list below shows the most populous urban areas in the UK as defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). (It should be noted that the Greater London Urban Area contains the whole of what is commonly called London, but ONS definitions divide London into a large number of smaller localities of which the largest is Croydon.)

Rank	Urban Area	Population (2001 Census)	Localities	Area (km²)	Density (People/km²)	Major localities
1	Greater London Urban Area	8,278,251	67	1,623.37	5,099.4	Croydon, Barnet, Ealing, Bromley
2	West Midlands Urban Area	2,284,093	22	599.72	3,808.6	Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall
3	Greater Manchester Urban Area	2,240,230	57	556.72	4,024.0	Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury
4	West Yorkshire Urban Area	1,499,465	26	370.02	4,052.4	Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Wakefield
5	Greater Glasgow	1,168,270	48	368.47	3,171.0	Glasgow, Paisley, Coatbridge, Clydebank, Motherwell

Golden Horseshoe, Ontario, Canada

The "Golden Horseshoe" is a densely populated and industrialized region centred around the west end of Lake Ontario in Southern Ontario, Canada. Most of it is also part of the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. With a population of 8.1 million people, it makes up slightly over a quarter (25.6%) of the population of Canada and contains approximately 75% of Ontario's population, making it one of the largest population concentrations in North America. Although it is a geographically named sub-region of Southern Ontario, "Greater Golden Horseshoe" is more frequently used today to describe the metropolitan regions that stretch across the area in totality.