Large cities today concentrate an increasing share of populations, skilled jobs, investments, and high value-added activities.
This concentration profoundly transforms the organization of territories and strengthens the economic weight of certain large urban agglomerations, which become major hubs of decision-making, innovation, and exchange. This process of concentrating people and strategic functions is called metropolitanization.
A concentration of activities and populations
Metropolitanization refers to the process by which populations, economic activities, leadership functions, and wealth tend to concentrate in the major cities and principal urban areas.
Metropolises attract in particular the headquarters of companies, financial institutions, universities, research centers, transport infrastructures and specialized services.
This concentration rests on agglomeration economies: the proximity between companies, workers, research centers and specialized services can foster exchanges, innovation, productivity and job creation.
Engine of economic dynamism
Metropolitanization can strengthen the attractiveness and competitiveness of the territories concerned. The concentration of skills, capital and infrastructures notably facilitates the creation of economic networks and the emergence of new activities.
Businesses benefit from broader access to a skilled workforce, to specialized suppliers and to large markets. Workers, for their part, can enjoy a wider range of professional opportunities.
This phenomenon also accompanies the transformation of economies towards services, technologies, finance, research and knowledge-intensive activities.
However, metropolitanization does not produce only positive effects. The concentration of activities can widen gaps between large metropolises and less attractive territories. It can also cause higher land and housing prices, infrastructure saturation, greater congestion and environmental pressures.
The question is therefore not strictly to promote the development of metropolises, but also to ensure that the benefits of this concentration are more evenly diffused to surrounding territories.
Metropolitanization constitutes a major transformation of contemporary economic geography. It reconfigures the relationships between cities, regions and territories by strengthening the role of the major urban poles in wealth creation and the organization of exchanges. Its analysis also helps to better understand current issues of territorial planning, competitiveness, mobility and reducing territorial inequalities.
