Quicknation    Metropolis

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Metropolis townMetropolis is a major city, which is an economical and cultural center for some country or larger region, and usually an important hub for international connections.

The word comes from the Greek ) which is how the Greek colonies of antiquity referred to their original cities, with whom they retained cultic and political-cultural connections. The word was used in post-classical Latin for the chief city of a province, the seat of the government, and in particular ecclesiastically for the seat or see of a metropolitan bishop to whom suffragan bishops were responsible. This usage equates the province with the diocese or episcopal see.

In modern usage the word is used for a , a set of adjacent and interconnected cities clustered around a major urban center. In this sense "" usually means "spanning the whole metropolis" (as in "metropolitan administration"); or "proper of a metropolis" (as in "metropolitan life", and opposed to "provincial" or "rural").

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In the United States an incorporated area or group of areas having a population more than 50,000 is required to have a metropolitan planning organization in order to facilitate major infrastructure projects and to ensure financial solubility. Thus, a population of 50,000 or greater has been used as a de facto standard in the United States to define a metropolis. A similar definition is used by the United States Census Bureau. They define a metropolitan statistical area as , designates the part of a country near or on the European continent; in the case of France, this would mean France without its overseas departments; for Portugal during the Portuguese Empire period, it used to be common to designate Portugal except its colonies - the