Metroplex

A metroplex is a contiguous metropolitan area that has more than one principal anchor city of near equal size or importance, commonly associated with the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.

According to the North Texas Commission (NTC), the term originated from an ad agency's portmanteau of the terms "metropolitan" and "complex". The NTC trademarked^[1] the term "Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex" in 1972 as a replacement for the previously-ubiquitous "North Texas".

Urban areas with smaller secondary anchor cities are not considered metroplexes, such as Mexico City, New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and Phoenix.

China

• Beijing-Tianjin
• Shanghai-Hangzhou-Nanjing, i.e., "Hu-Ning-Hang" which is usually used in Chinese news.
• Canton-Shamchun-Hong Kong-Macau, major cities of the Pearl River Delta region

Germany

• The Ruhr area, consisting of Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Oberhausen and other cities

Japan

• Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto

Netherlands

• Amsterdam-The Hague-Rotterdam, also called Randstad or Edge City

Poland

• Katowice urban area: a large industrial region in Upper Silesia, with a population of around 3 million people.^[2] Although it is named after the administrative capital Katowice, other large cities such as Sosnowiec, Gliwice, Zabrze, Ruda Śląska, Rybnik, Tychy, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Chorzów, Jaworzno and Jastrzębie-Zdrój are included as well as numerous other smaller towns such as Świętochłowice, Wodzisław Śląski and Oświęcim among many others. This region is in turn part of the larger Upper Silesian metropolitan area, with over 5 million people.
• Tricity: consists of the cities of Gdynia, Gdańsk and Sopot.
• Bydgoszcz and Toruń

Serbia

• Belgrade-Novi Sad-Pančevo

South Korea

• Seoul, Incheon, Seongnam, Ilsan and other cities in the Gyeonggi.

Taiwan

• Tainan-Kaohsiung

Turkey

• Tekirdağ-Istanbul-Izmit-Adapazarı-Yalova-Bursa, also known as Eastern Marmara Metroplex
• Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area

United Arab Emirates

• Dubai-Sharjah

United Kingdom

• Bedford-Kempston
• Blackburn-Burnley
• Central Lancashire: parts of the City of Preston, the Borough of South Ribble and the Borough of Chorley
• Great Western Cities - Bristol-Newport-Cardiff
• Medway: Gillingham-Rochester-Chatham
• Nottingham-Derby
• South Hampshire metropolitan area: Southampton-Portsmouth
• South East Dorset Conurbation: Bournemouth-Poole
• West Yorkshire Urban Area: Leeds-Bradford

United States

In the United States, the term "Metroplex" most often refers to the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Other metropolitan areas in the U.S. that may locally be called a "metroplex" are:

• Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, Maryland/District of Columbia
• Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, more often called "The Triangle"
• Gulfport-Biloxi, Mississippi
• Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, more often called the "Twin Cities"
• San Bernardino-Riverside, California, more often called the Inland Empire or the Twin Cities of the West
• San Jose-Oakland-San Francisco, California, more often called the "Bay Area"
• Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida, referred to together as Tampa Bay
• Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, also known as Florida's "Gold Coast"
• Winston-Salem–Greensboro–High Point, North Carolina, more often called the "Piedmont Triad"
• Huntsville–Athens–Decatur–Florence, Alabama, more often called the "Tennessee Valley" area or "The Shoals", referring to nearby Muscle Shoals, Alabama
• Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC more often called "Hampton Roads" and also known as the Tidewater Region
• Daytonnati, a convergence of the urban areas of both Dayton and greater Cincinnati
• Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, conventionally called "North Texas"
• Cleveland–Akron, Ohio, also known as Northeastern Ohio
• Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, also known as Wyoming Valley.

Multinational

Africa

• -:Kinshasa–Brazzaville

Americas

• -: Detroit–Windsor
• -: El Paso–Juárez
• -: Golden Horseshoe–Buffalo
• -: Laredo–Nuevo Laredo
• -: Matamoros–Brownsville
• -: San Diego–Tijuana

Asia

• -: Singapore–Johor Bahru

Europe

• -: Copenhagen–Malmö
• -: Görlitz-Zgorzelec
• -: Vienna–Bratislava

References

See also

• Megalopolis (city type)
• Megacity