中文摘要：

随着我国城市化进程的加快，在长江三角洲、京津冀、珠江三角洲和辽中南等经济社会发展水平最高的地区，大城市的地域空间组织开始从单体型城市的简单形态，向以中心城市为核心的诸多城市和地区相互交融形成的都市圈的复杂形态转变。大上海、大北京、大广州、大沈阳等大都市圈的雏形已经初步形成，同时在一些经济发展水平较高的大中城市的周边地区，一些区域性都市圈和地方性都市圈也在逐渐形成。以这些中心城市为核心的都市圈的形成与发展，对区域经济社会的发展起到了越来越重要的支撑作用。借鉴发达国家的经验，实施都市圈的发展战略已经成为一个共识。正确引导都市圈的建设与发展是我国新形势下城市发展的一个重要课题。本文指出了我国目前都市圈理论研究和规划实践上存在的一些误区，对都市圈的基本概念、地域本质、形成机理、地域结构与空间形态、类型与规模等进行了分析，为我国21世纪都市圈的建设与发展提供科学的理论依据。

英文摘要：

With the acceleration of the urbanization process in China, in the highly developed areas such as Yangtze River Delta; Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region; Pearl River Delta Region and the central and southern Liaoning province, the regional spatial organization of metropolises began to turn from a simple pattern with a single city to a complicated pattern with the central city as a core and developing mutally with many other cities and regions. The rudiment of Shanghai metropolitan region, Beijing metropolitan region, Guangzhou metropolitan region, and Shenyang metropolitan region have taken shape. At the same time, some regional metropolitan regions and local metropolitan regions have been formed around some big and medium-sized cities with relatively high economic development. The formation and development of the metropolitan regions with these cities as a core have played a more important and supporting role to the regional social and economic progess. The actualization of development strategy of a metropolitan region has become the common view by consulting the experience of developed countries. The correct induction of metro- politan regional construction and development has become a key issue in the new situation of urban development in China. However, there are still some misunderstandings in the theoretical research of our metropolitan regions, for example, the knowledge of some issues like the geographical nature, formation mechanism, spatial structure, models and scales of such regions is not very scientific, which has led to the blind expansion in the size and scale of the metropolitan regions in our planning and practice. As a result, the planning of internal transportation, land utilization and construction of urban infrastructure within the metropolitan regions lacked feasiblity and scientific support. This paper points out some long-standing mistaken ideas in the theoratical studies and planning practices of the metropolitan regions and analyzes the basic concept, geographic hypostasis, format