Urban Regions : Ecology and Planning Beyond the City

Thirty-eight urban regions mapped

Edmonton
Ottawa
Chicago Philadelphia
San Diego/ Atlanta
Tijuana
Mexico City Tegucigalpa

Iquitos

Brasilia

Santiago

Portland

Stockholm

Barcelona

Bamako Abeche

Nairobi

Cuttack

Berlin

Rome

Moscow

Bucharest

Erzurum

Te h r a n

Cairo

London

Nantes

Kagoshima

Ulaanbaatar

Beijing Seoul

Bangkok

Kuala Lumpur

Samarinda

East London Canberra

Rahimyar Khan

Sapporo

Figure 5.1The 38 urban regions worldwide selected for analysis. City population

sizes (>250 000) range from high to low in each of six geographic areas: Europe;

NorthAmerica; Latin America; Africa; West to East Asia; and South Asia to Australia.

many moons. Over 350 cities worldwide were at least briefly considered, some
in considerable detail. This process produced a set of primary criteria and sec-
ondary criteria, which formed the basis for ultimately selecting 38 urban regions
(Figure5.1).

Primary criteria

(1) World distribution (to represent a breadth of geographic areas/

continents and cultures).

(2) Wide range of predominant land covers around cities (e.g., for-

est/woodland, cropland).

(3) Wide range of city population sizes (in six categories, 0.25--0.5, 0.5--1,

1--2, 2--4, 4--8, and 8--16 million inhabitants in the city).

(4) Wide range of forms of metropolitan areas (e.g., rounded, lobed, elon-

gated).

(5) Wide range of city locations relative to major water bodies (e.g., by river,

lake, sea).

(6) Barcelona (Spain) was included (since it seemed to be the best-analyzed

case study available).

Secondary criteria

(Generally used in selecting between two good candidate cities.)

(1) Notnear another city larger than itself, or >250 000 population (thus

Vienna, Washington, and Lahore were not considered).