The Ecology of the Metacity: Shaping the Dynamic, Patchy, Networked, and Adaptive Cities of the Future

The chapter builds a metacity framework and details its features and utility. We start by outlining the general strategy for dealing with spatial complexity on various scales by using nested, spatial mosaics (Wu and Wu, Chap. 11, this volume). We then turn to a description of the three kinds of mosaics that are needed to understand and work with urban structure and change in the metacity: processes, choices, and outcomes. The relationship of these three mosaics to urban adaption and resilience is then considered. Resilience and adaptation, and their relationship to the socially constructed goals of sustainability, require a regional focus that does not stumble at de jure or perceived urban/rural boundaries. We end with a fuller description of the metacity as a synthetic tool, relating it to key insights from the chapters in this book. We conclude with a sense of the excitement that the metacity concept brings to the linkage of ecology, social processes, and urban design, as well as its capacity to address the diversity of urban forms that exist or are emerging around the world.