MICROPOLITAN

micropolitan: translation

(my.kro.PAWL.uh.tun)

adj.

Relating to an area that has an urban center surrounded by one or more counties or regions, and that has a population between 10,000 and 50,000; relating to a small city.

The federal government is scheduled to unveil a new classification system in 2003 that will increase the attention given to small communities. Non-metropolitan cities with 10,000-50,000 residents will become known as "micropolitan" areas.

— "Micropolitan' classification helps smaller cities compete,"Memphis Business Journal, November 16, 2001

The trick will be to keep that panoramic ambition and that huge driving energy and yet not lose the feeling for small perfections that used to characterize the museum.... But if the big museum is to be what we are asking it to be — the ideal metropolis, in which the art of all times and all places is at home — we must not lose themicropolitantouch.

— John Russell, "The Power and Glory,"The New York Times, May 2, 1982

This word is the smaller, possibly cuter, version ofmetropolitan(from a Greek word meaning, literally, "mother city").Micropolitanhas been in the news of late because, as the above citation says, the U.S. government is adding the term as a new category of community. (It's estimated that the U.S. contains over 500 of thesemicropolitanareas.) However, the more general sense of the term is much older, as the earliest citation shows.

aerotropolis

arrival city

boomburb

doughnut pattern

food desert

ideopolis

penturban

real estate refugees

retail leakage

ruralpolitan

rurban

Sprinkler City

technoburb

Geography