How the Brits say "Urban Sprawl"

In a fun work debate on the emergence of urban space, a fellow co-worker pulled out a tricky geographic term to describe "urban spawl" not-often used on this side of the pond.
"Conurbation", in all its quick e-reference glory, is listed below.

From the Dictionary of Human Geography (3rd Edition), ed. by R.J. Johnston et. al.

A term coined by Patrick Geddes to describe a built-up area created by the coalescence of once-separate urban settlements, initially through ribbon development along the main inter-urban routes. With greater urban sprawl the term has now been largely replaced by concepts such as daily urban system, megapolis, metropolitan area and metropolitan labor area.

Also from Dictionary.com

conurbation \kon-uhr-BAY-shuhn\, noun:An aggregation or continuous network of urban communities.

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

Indeed the population in the greater London conurbation grew by 125 per cent in the period 1861 to 1911 when the population of England as a whole grew by 80 per cent.-- Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats

Conurbation is from Latin con-, with, together + urbs, city + the suffix -ation.