Autant en emporte le vent... Espaces et populations dans la métropole de troisième génération

• Main Author: Guido Martinotti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2006-12-01
• Series: Belgeo
• Subjects: metropolis; Mega Urban Region; Meta-city Region; technological trajectories; innovation; communication
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/11736
• ISSN: 1377-2368; 2294-9135

This essay tries to put changes in physical and social morphology of contemporary cities in a theoretical frame by attempting to describe how the combination of two interrelated technological trajectories, one in the mobility and the other in the information field, affects the physical shape of contemporary urban structure promoting the creation and diffusion of MURs, Mega Urban Regions. In this process an important role is attributed to the development of machines for the house that save time and labour, such as the refrigerator or the washing machine, and of those that consume the time saved, but also connect the den with the outside world sucking the agora into the house, such as the telephone, TV, or Internet. More time at home means a pressure for roomier abodes and, other things being equal, the latter can be found more easily in the periurban areas of the new metropolis. This development has been favoured by successive waves of private motorisation that only recently are being challenged by environmental and energetic issues. Contemporarily the metropolis changes also its social morphology with the emergence of Non Resident Populations NRPs.