Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
The Rhein-Ruhr is a singular population agglomeration, but no one would consider themselves part of the same region. Cologne and Düsseldorf are historically very different (economy, food, religion, accent, sport) and the Ruhr is quite distinct from the other two.
Cologne-Bonn is a "metro" in the U.S. sense, and possibly the Ruhr excluding Düsseldorf.
In Germany everything can change in 10 km; in the U.S. you can drive for 200 km and nothing changes. Another difference is that all cities are separated by "rural" land, even two cities with adjacent political boundaries, as in Ruhr, so there is never continuous development.
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But than you need to be coherent. If you place Guangzhou and Shenzhen or Boston and Providence into the same metro/urban area, Duisburg and Düsseldorf must be placed under the same.
I don't think cultural differences or even separated labour markets should be an issue there. Such things happen even in monocentric urban areas like São Paulo or Tokyo. The fact is Rhein-Ruhr is all on the same state and are a continuous and rather compact urban area. Ditto for Leeds-Bradford or even Manchester-Liverpool.
BTW I'm curious: why don't the German urban areas don't touch each other. Do they have greenbelts like the British or it's just a random coincidence?