A Metropolitan Area is a large population center that consists of several cities or towns clustered together. A metropolitan area usually has one or more large cities serving as its hub or hubs, and several suburbs.
The term is sometimes abbreviated to 'metro', for example in Metro Manila and Washington, DC Metro Area, and then shoud not be mistaken to mean the metro rail system of the city.
If several metropolitan areas are located in succession, metropolitan areas are sometimes grouped together as as megalopolis[?]. The classic example of a megalopolis is BosWash, consisting of the major metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, running from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C.. This concept was first proposed by the French geographer Jean Gottmann in his book Megalopolis, who studied the northeastern United States.
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