I hope I will be forgiven for calling the MetaCity a
Baltimore idea, at least in part. Architect
and leader of the BES Urban Design Working Group, Brian McGrath is the senior
parent of the idea of the MetaCity. The co-parent
of the idea is architect and architectural historian Grahame Shane, famous for
his ideas of recombinant urbanism (among others). Maybe I'm an uncle. At any rate, I have to admit a close
relationship to this offspring idea, and admitting that will leave the reader unsurprised
that I think it is an important contribution to the emerging theory of urban
systems. It is certainly an important
feature of contemporary urban ecological science, and can serve as a useful
link with other disciplines struggling to firm up urban theory for the 21st
century.
This essay is stimulated by two recent papers by
McGrath. One is called "Collecting
and Disseminating Knowledge on the Architecture of the Metacity" (McGrath
2016), and the other is called "The Architecture of the Metacity: Land Use
Change, Patch Dynamics and Urban Form in Chiang Mai, Thailand" (McGrath et
al. 2017). I was fascinated by these two
papers for several reasons.
First, they provide a good description of the metacity idea,
where it came from, how it differs from other currently circulating
perspectives on extensive urban systems, and what it means for the connection
between ecological science and the theory and practice of urban design (which
is inclusive of planing, architecture, and landscape architecture). Second, the papers suggest that the metacity
idea applies well beyond Baltimore, where at least some of its roots extend
deeply.
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| Chiang Mai City (Wikimedia Commons) |
Description.
The term metacity (prounounced with more or less equal
emphasis on both syllables) was first used by the United Nations as a marker of
size. The prefix was used to describe
cities larger than megacities. But that seemed to McGrath (and me) a waste of a
powerful term. Meta in ecology refers to
a process or phenomenon that abstracts or stands beyond some other concrete or
localized one. For example, a
metapopulation is a spatially distributed aggregation of individual populations
each of which is undergoing its own dynamics, and which are differentially
connected by migration or flow of genes with other populations in the
aggregation. The term meta, derived from
a Greek preposition, has lots of other meanings, but the sense of beyond or
above is the one that is relevant here.
A metacity is thus a level of aggregation above that of
individual urban or urbanized settlements, and which suggests that the
different nodes in the aggregate are spatially distributed and differentially
connected with each other by flows of people, goods and services, economic
resources, information, waste procucts, and so on. McGrath and Shane (2012) emphasize that the
metacity involves electronic and hand held media, which makes connectivity much
more rapid, individualized, and flexible than the kinds of connectivities that
fueled modernism since the eras of Gutenberg, the Dutch East India Company,
Marconi, and Alexander Graham Bell.
The metacity concept is not restricted to any particular
spatial scale. Aggregations of
differentially dynamic and differentially connected settlements can exist
within a county, a nation, or at global scales. It is pattern, connection, and
dynamics that are key to the concept, not a set size. McGrath et al. (2017: 53) emphsize that the
metacity is "a new urban form."
Distinctiveness
The metacity brings together several themes that have been
emerging over many years to summarize the changing nature of urban processes
and urban forms. Earlier terms, such as metropolis
and megalopolis have embodied specific assumptions. Metropolis, for example,
suggests colonial or regional control by a large core city. Megalopolis as originally coined referred to
a linearly array of regionally significant metropolises, powered by coal and
steam, and connected by rail and wire.
Even the familiar term "urbanization" carries assumptions of a
set temporal sequence of development from economies based on managing the
resources of a nearby hinterland, through trade across ocean basins, through
industrial productivity and connectivity.
Such a sequence is implied in the term "post-industrial," for
example. The metacity concept, although
it is manifestly a dynamic one, does not assume a single or even predominant
historical sequence of urban development.
The metacity is a framework that can accommodate the successful
assumptions of a variety of different urban ideologies, histories, and
projections, but is not limited by the erroneous or narrow ones. Perhaps McGrath's term
"metaurbanization" is useful for pointing out the distinctive
conceptual contributions of the metacity concept.
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| Rice terraces in Chiang Mai area (Pixaby, public domain) |
Connecting ecology and urban design
Contemporary urban ecology has brought the perspective of
ecology of the city, in contrast to
ecology in the city to the fore. This means that ecological science as an
integrative pursuit linking with social sciences, economics, and other modes of
understanding human agency and concerns, studies entire urban systems, not just
the "green" areas embedded within them. That is the meaning of ecology of the city.
Connecting with urban design can also employ a perspective of rather than in the city. Architecture,
McGrath points out, has focused on specific sites and projects. That is, it has been a practice within the
city. Following architect Aldo Rossi,
McGrath espouses an architecture of
the city, meaning that the concerns of architecture and other design fields
must be the larger urban context, not just a particular client's property, or a
gem of "starchitecture" intended to elevate a neglected downtown to
international attention. The parallels
in architectural thinking and ecological thinking about the nature of urban
systems and involvement in them is striking.
The metacity concept demands scientific understanding of the
dynamics of individual patches in urban areas, the differential connectivity
among patches (and indeed with other urban areas and non-urban ecosystems), and
the shifting structure and processes of entire urban mosaics. Such information can in turn help understand the
kinds of impacts -- both positive and negative -- that individual designs or
networks of designed urban places can have.
The concerns of both designers and ecological scientists with the
nature, change, and benefits of spatial heterogeneity or patchiness is a
powerful bridge between the disciplines.
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| Rental ad for suburban bungalow in Chiang Mai (Wikimedia) |
Broad applicability
McGrath, Sangawongse, Thaitakoo, and Corte (2017) apply the
metacity framework to the Chiang Mai urban area in Thailand. The first part of their paper is a
comprehensive overview of the metacity concept.
The second part indicates how metacity dynamics in the Chiang Mai urban
region has evolved to reflect "the demands of global digital financial
networks and neo-liberal trade policies" while also "grounded in the
ecology and life worlds of particular localities" (p 53). Features that show up in their analyses of
land change in the context of the metacity are comprehensive understanding of
the patch array, including "natural," managed, constructed, and
incidental patches; the role of social production of space; and the hybridity
or urban and rural spaces. In these
aspects the analysis suggests parallels with the continuum of urbanity (Boone
et al. 2014).
The important point here is that the metacity is applicable
to places as disparate as post-industrial Baltimore, MD USA, which exhibits dispersed
dynamics both "shrinking" and growth, and Chiang Mai, Thailand, which
exhibits a trajectory of patchy and complex land change involving local shifts
in livelihood and embedding in global financial networks and regulatory models.
Steward T.A. Pickett, Director Emeritus
Literature Cited
Boone, C. G., C. L. Redman, H. Blanco, D. Haase, J. Koch, S.
Lwasa, H. Nagendra, S. Pauleit, S. T. A. Pickett, K. C. Seto, and M. Yokohari.
2014. Reconceptualizing land for sustainable urbanity. Pages 313–330 in K. C.
Seto and A. Reenberg, editors. Rethinking urban land use in a global era. MIT
Press, Cambridge.
McGrath, B. 2016. Collecting and Disseminating Knowledge on
the Architecture of the Metacity. Urbanisation 1:13–18. DOI: 10.1177/2455747116640431
McGrath, B., and S. T. A. Pickett. 2011. The Metacity: A
Conceptual Framework for Integrating Ecology and Urban Design. Challenges
2:55–72. DOI: 10.3390/challe2040055
McGrath, B., S. Sangawongse, D. Thaitakoo, and M. B. Corte.
2017. The Architecture of the Metacity: Land Use Change, Patch Dynamics and
Urban Form in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Urban Planning 2:53–71. DOI:
10.17645/up.v2i1.869
McGrath, B., and D. G. Shane. 2012. Metropolis, megalopolis
and the metacity. Page in C. G. Crysler, S. Cairns, and H. Heynen, editors. The
Sage handbook of architectural theory. Sage, London.
