CONURBATION
A conurbation is the amalgamation of land supporting a growing city/cities joined through a combined regional economy and character. Geddes describes it through the example of industrial towns and cities uniting into vast city regions called conurbations, which the broadest surveys are needed to realize. 1 Conurbations express the present day evolution of our cities where they overflow their traditional borders, absorbing the adjacent villages, towns and cities, in order to give it more land, resources and people to support itself. This amalgamation forms a recognizable whole, the character of which has developed as a response to the regional environment supporting it and the economic activities arising from those conditions. A conurbation is a polycentric urban agglomeration where transportation has ideally also developed to link areas more coherently, thus creating a singular economic region. Examples include Greater London, and the space between Liverpool and Manchester which forms Lancaston. Geddes and others have even speculated that the New York-Boston area would sprawl together across the length of the American Atlantic Coast and beyond, becoming one vast conurbation. 2 A conurbation can be contrasted with a megalopolis, in which the urban centers are close but not physically contiguous and the transportation and economic and labor markets are still separated.3