Research For Defining the Scope of the Metropolitan Are-a: A case study of Nanjing Metropolitan area

This paper explored a way to define the scope of the metropolitan area. Firstly, this paper synthesizes that four factors which included space, time, flow and gravity mainly influenced the scope of the metropolitan area. Secondly, based on the four factors separately four kinds of different scope could be got. Thirdly, overlapped the four kinds of scope and divided the whole scope to directly influenced area, generally influenced area and indirectly influenced area. At last the new kind of way is applied to Nanjing metropolitan area.