New book: Becoming Metropolitan

Using a unique data-rich study of Newcastle’s becoming of a metropolitan city-region in the nineteenth century, this book explores a new understanding of how successful cities attain a metropolitan status through disruptions of incessant economic advances being ameliorated by myriad social organisations to create a new vibrant urban environment.

The book defines the specific process of ‘becoming metropolitan’ by bringing together economic and social urban studies to explain an interactive development that when successful, creates a metropolitan city-region. In addition, a real example of this is meticulously described through a detailed case study that traces the process across decades to a metropolitan outcome. In doing so, it combines theoretical and empirical understandings within a single text and provides accessible information to a unique and large dataset.

Becoming Metropolitan will appeal to graduates and researchers of Geography, Sociology, Planning and History specialising in cities and urban studies. It will also be valuable to a larger public audience with interest in cities, as ‘metropolitan’ is a commonplace idea easily understood, and in the case-study city.

Peter J. Taylor is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and Founder of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC). He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at both Loughborough and Northumbria Universities.

Michael Barke is the Honorary Librarian, Executive Committee and Council Member of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne based at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon Tyne. Formerly he was Reader in Human Geography at Northumbria University.

Zachary P. Neal is Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Network for Social Network Analysis and chairs their Working Group on Data Sharing.