Conurbation/metrosexual

Question

What is an example of a conurbation in the U.S.? New York City? L.A.? Washington D.C.? How is it different from a megalopolis?

Does metrosexual imply gay? And when are they going to do a "Sapphic Eye for the Straight Gal"?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]What is an example of a conurbation in the U.S.? New York City? L.A.? Washington D.C.?[/nq]
'Conurbation' describes an area where an urban settlement has merged with another settlement or settlements.
[nq:1]How is it different from a megalopolis?[/nq]
This term was invented to describe an area of a group of populous conurbations, eg. the NE US.
Adrian

Usenet · Answer

(Email Removed) filted:
[nq:1]Does metrosexual imply gay? And when are they going to do a "Sapphic Eye for the Straight Gal"?[/nq]
As I understand it, "metrosexual" specifically means "not gay, but concerned with those things normally associated with gay men (e.g. grooming, showtunes, the life of Judy Garland)..r

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]And when are they going to do a "Sapphic Eye for the Straight Gal"?[/nq]
Oh, just what we need. Perfectly nicely dressed and made up young women given the work-boot and buzzcut treatment.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What is an example of a conurbation in the U.S.? New York City? L.A.? Washington D.C.?[/nq]
As far as I know, "conurbation" is a word that's more common in BrE, and seems to correspond to our "metropolitan area". So "the New York metropolitan area" or "the Tri-State Area" (that one) would be examples of conurbations. The actual City of New York is not a conurbation, or is only part of a larger conurbation. I've noticed "L.A." being used to mean "the L.A. metropolitan area", I think, but ICBW. What helps there is that the Los Angeles area is a monstrous sprawl of so-called "subdivisions" stretching on for hundreds of miles, so. But then again I don't think anyone speaks of San Diego as being part of L.A. However, San Diego and Los Angeles are often considered to be in the same metropolitan area, like Baltimore and D.C. both being in Laurel.
[nq:1]How is it different from a megalopolis?[/nq]
For one thing, a megalopolis has to be big.

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"Adrian Bailey" (Email Removed) wrote on 28 Dec 2003:

You must mean the Boston-Washington, DC, horridor ("corridor", really, but that conperturbation was one of the reasons I left the east coast forever in 1972.

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.

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[nq:1]Does metrosexual imply gay?[/nq]
The Washington Post did a feature on the term a little while ago, and someone wrote the Editor to suggest that the new term is unnecessary since we already have the perfectly good "fop" to describe that sort of man. Also, "dandy", "Beau Brummell", etc. The more things change the more they stay the same.

John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam is too much.

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[nq:1]What is an example of a conurbation in the U.S.? New York City? L.A.? Washington D.C.? How is it different from a megalopolis?[/nq]
When Sir Patrick Geddes, a Scottish biologist turned sociologist, sat down in 1915 to pen Cities in Evolution , a work on urban planning, he needed a word. How to refer to thickly populated regions usually centered around one huge city? (He had, first and foremost, Greater London in mind.) "Some name, then for these city regions, these town aggregates, is wanted . . . . What of conurbations?" he asked rhetorically early on in his work. For his coinage, Geddes combined the Latin for "city" "urbs," already familiar in "urban" and "suburb" with the Latin prefix "con-" ("together") and the English noun suffix "-ation." It turned out that his word suited English speakers fine we've been using it ever since.
From $B!H(BMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day$B!I(B (July 21, 2001)
To live there in that great smoking conurbation rumbling with the constant thunder of locomotives, filled with the moaning of train whistles coming down the Potomac Valley, was beyond my most fevered hopes. (Russell Baker, "Memoir of a Small-Town Boyhood," New York Times , September 12, 1982)

With the conurbation of shanty towns emerging in the area like mushrooms, very soon it might take hours to cross the area. And who says this is the way to develop a city or a nation?$B!!(B(S.B. Akuffo, $B!H(BThe Land Use Mess at Kasoa,$B!I(B Accra Mail (Ghana), Oct 03, 2002)

Anxious to consolidate St Petersburg as a conurbation, Peter the Great forced his nobles to build second houses on the plots of land he gave them just outside the city. ("Books And Arts: Country Life, The Russian Summer House,$B!H(B The Economist June 21, 2003)
Regards,
masakim

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Does metrosexual imply gay? And when are they going to do a "Sapphic Eye for the Straight Gal"?[/nq]
He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference.
Simpson himself coined the word $B!H(Bmetrosexual$B!I(B in 1994:

The promotion of metrosexuality was left to the men's style press, magazines such as The Face, GQ, Esquire, Arena and FHM, the new media which took off in the Eighties and is still growing (GQ gains 10,000 new readers every month). They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire.

Some people said unkind things. American GQ, for example, was popularly dubbed Gay Quarterly. Little wonder that all these magazines with the possible exception of The Face address their metrosexual readership as if none of them were homosexual or even bisexual. (Mark Simpson, "Here come the mirror men," The Independent , November 15, 1994)
When did homosexual become synonymous with style.. Since June, after the New York Times ran a Style section story about $B!H(Bmetrosexuals" straight men who were inclined to spa, get pedicures, and garb themselves in Versace and Magli the culture has been buzzing about this "new trend." The term "metrosexual" was coined in 1994 by British cultural critic Mark Simpson. But variations of the theme have been around since the 70s.. ("Buy-sexual TV getting ridiculous," The Toronto Star , August 14, 2003)
Regards,
masakim

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