Metro(Polis): Decentering Urbanity in Conceptualizing Metropolitanism

Abstract This article deconstructs the neologism metropolis to reconsider the constitutive role that metro and polis play in making metropolitan signification distinct. Where metropolis’s urbanity, and particularly its international urbanity, has been emphasized in the past, this article focuses on the centralizing function of metropolis in order to theorize the term metropolis as a distinct spatial term that could become a method for conceptualizing and analyzing the relations of space organized in a centralized hierarchy. It synthesizes metropolitanisms from postcolonial studies, urban studies, and literary studies.