Perhaps this is what you are looking for.

macrocephaly: abnormal enlargement or overdevelopment. (collins)

Wikipedia:
Overdevelopment refers to a process by which natural resources are impacted by urbanization and/or road construction, at a rate significantly harmful to the ecosystem. Environmental activism is a frequent response to overdevelopment, as well as are many fields of academic study. Sustainability is the conceptual goal that is frequently cited as a response.

This is a new one on me. It is the type of term that comes out of universities.. If it were a text for laymen it would require and explanation, as it appears fairly new.

feature the phenomenon called urban macrocephalia, that is, the development of only one. huge metropolis, much larger than any other city of the urban ...
www.fig.net/pub/mexico/papers_eng/ts5_nunes_eng.pdf

Te active urban corridors of Europe served as channels for cultural development. ..... France is, of course, the artchetype of macrocephalia, and Paris the ...
blocs.mesvilaweb.cat/media/RWR1YXJkIE1pcmEgQSB0YWxlIGJldHdlZW4gdHdvIGNpdGllcw==_52967_1_6270_1.doc

SLUM HOUSING: A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE FOR DEALING WITH URBAN MARGINALIZATION. This research project involves studying one slum community in Morocco and ...
www.law.emory.edu/ihr/jamila.html - 16k - Cached - Similar pages

[PDF] Urban Marginality and Ethnographic Practice: on the Ethics of ...of us deal with as ethnographers of urban marginalization. My own. research interests, homelessness and psychiatry, typically involve a form ...
www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/city.1996.8.1.108

With a bit of help from Big Ed.

As Big Ed said, the source term sounds like a very complicated, and university-inspired, description of a very simple idea.


From Moliner

conurbación (del ingl. «conurbation») f. Conjunto de centros urbanos próximos que al crecer llegan a constituir una sola unidad.

From Oxford Spanish

marginal adj
1 a ‹ barrio ›: en las barriadas marginales in the poor, outlying areas of the city
b (no central, de poca importancia) ‹ posición › peripheral; ‹ asunto › marginal, peripheral

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conurbation
neighbourhood (UK) or neighborhood (US)

They are actually very common concepts in urban development (at least their Spanish denominations are); and the first one is borrowed from a medical term, to give it more of a "scientific" connotation. I would go with somethig similar to what Big Ed proposes, except that "urban" would only refer to marginalization and not to macrocephalia... if it is one of the titles in a course description, the content will probably shed some light on the actual meaning.

good luck

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Note added at 11 hrs (2007-09-21 12:20:48 GMT)
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I'm liking "macrocephaly" best...