Metropolis

A big city belonging to a larger urban agglomeration, but which is not the core of that agglomeration, is not generally considered a metropolis but a part of it. The plural of the word is metropolises,^[3] although the Latin plural is metropoles, from the Greek metropoleis (μητρoπόλεις).


For urban areas outside metropolitan areas that generate a similar attraction on a smaller scale for their region, the concept of the regiopolis ("regio" for short) was introduced by urban and regional planning researchers in Germany in 2006.^[4]

Etymology[edit]

Metropolis (μητρόπολις) is a Greek word, (plural: metropoleis) coming from μήτηρ, mḗtēr meaning "mother" and πόλις, pólis meaning "city" or "town", which is how the Greek colonies of antiquity referred to their original cities, with whom they retained cultic and political-cultural connections. The word was used in post-classical Latin for the chief city of a province, the seat of the government and, in particular, ecclesiastically for the seat or see of a metropolitan bishop to whom suffragan bishops were responsible.^[5] This usage equates the province with the diocese or episcopal see.^[6]


In a colonial context, it is the "mother city" of a colony, that is, the city which sent out settlers. The word has distant roots in the colonial past of Ancient Greece with first usage in Middle English around the 14th century.^[7] This was later generalized to a city regarded as a center of a specified activity, or any large, important city in a nation.