Great Lakes Megalopolis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Great Lakes Megalopolis
Megalopolis (city type)
A megalopolis is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas. The term was used by Oswald Spengler in his 1918 book, The Decline of the West, and Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and...

consists of the group of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

n metropolitan area

Metropolitan area

The term metropolitan area refers to a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and housing. A metropolitan area usually encompasses multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships,...

s which surround the Great Lakes region

Great Lakes region (North America)

The Great Lakes region of North America, occasionally known as the Third Coast or the Fresh Coast , includes the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as the Canadian province of Ontario...

mainly within the Midwestern

Midwestern United States

The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the Southern

Southern Ontario

Southern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

area of Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, along with large parts of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

. The region extends from the Milwaukee–Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

corridor to the Detroit–Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

corridor, and includes Buffalo

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

, Dayton

Dayton

Dayton is a city in Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States.Dayton may also refer to:-United States:*Dayton, Alabama*Dayton, California, in Butte County*Dayton, Lassen County, California*Dayton, Idaho*Dayton, Indiana...

, Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...

, Indianapolis

Indianapolis

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

, Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

, Rochester

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

, and Toledo

Toledo, Ohio

Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...

, reaching as far as Pittsburgh, St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, and Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

. The region had an estimated population of 54 million for the 2000 Census and is projected to reach about 65 million by 2025.

History of the concept

The region was partially outlined as an emergent megalopolis in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

geographer

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

Jean Gottmann

Jean Gottmann FRS was a French geographer who was most widely known for his seminal study on the urban region of the Northeast Megalopolis. His main contributions to human geography were in the sub-fields of urban, political, economic, historical and regional geography...

. Gottmann envisaged the development of megalopolises in the U.S.: BosWash

Northeast megalopolis

The Northeast megalopolis or Boston–Washington megalopolis is the heavily urbanized area of the United States stretching from the the northern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts to the southern suburbs of Washington, D.C. On a map, the region appears almost as a perfectly straight line. As of 2000,...

, from Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, Chipitts from Chicago

Chicago

to Pittsburgh, and SanSan, from San Francisco

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

to San Diego

San Diego, California

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

.
In 1965, Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn was one of the preeminent futurists of the latter third of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s he predicted the rise of Japan as a major world power. He was a founder of the Hudson Institute think tank and originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems...

speculated about the future of the three megalopolises in the year 2000, referring to their names as "half-frivolous" and not mentioning Gottman. In the 1960s and 1970s, urban planner and architect Constantinos Doxiadis

Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis , was a Greek architect and town planner. He became world wide known as the lead architect of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan, and later as the father of Ekistics...

authored books, studies, and reports including those regarding the growth potential of the Great Lakes Megalopolis. Doxiadis envisioned Detroit as the central urban area in the Great Lakes Megalopolis.

The Virginia Tech Metropolitan Institute's Beyond Megalopolis, an attempt to update Gottmann's work, outlined a similar "Midwest" megapolitan area

Megaregions of the United States

A Megaregion, also known as a Megalopolis or Megapolitan Area, refers to a clustered network of American cities whose population ranges or is projected to range from about 7 to 63 million by the year 2025. America 2050, an organization sponsored by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, lists 11...

as one of ten such areas in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Over 200 million tons of cargo are shipped annually through the Great Lakes. Half the nation's population growth and two-thirds of its economic growth is expected to occur within the megaregions over the next four decades. America 2050 project has identified eleven Megaregions of the United States

Megaregions of the United States

, including the Great Lakes Megalopolis.

Economy

As a separate economy, the Great Lakes region

Great Lakes region (North America)

, which includes most of the area urban planners have called the Great Lakes Megalopolis, is one of the world's largest economies. The Great Lakes contain one-fifth of the world's surface fresh water and have a combined shoreline of 10,210 miles (17,017 km). About 200 million tons of cargo are shipped by way of the Great Lakes each year. The region is home to two major world-renowned Global cities

Global city

A global city is a city that is deemed to be an important node in the global economic system...

; Chicago

Chicago

and Toronto

Toronto

.

Tourism is an important economic factor in and around the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Cruising Coalition supports passenger ship cruises through a joint U.S-Canadian venture to Great Lakes Ports and the Saint Lawrence Seaway

Saint Lawrence Seaway

The Saint Lawrence Seaway , , is the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal...

Population centers

Rank	Area Table of United States Combined Statistical Areas thumb\|An enlargeable map of the 125 [[Combined Statistical Area]]s of the [[United States]]The United States Office of Management and Budget has defined 125 Combined Statistical Areas for the United States of America...	State/ Province	CSA/CMA 2009 population	Projected 2025 population	Projected increase 2009-2025
1	Chicago	IL-IN-WI	9,804,845	10,935,100	1,130,255
2	Toronto Greater Toronto Area The Greater Toronto Area is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, with a 2006 census population of 5.5 million. The Greater Toronto Area is usually defined as the central city of Toronto, along with four regional municipalities surrounding it: Durham, Halton, Peel, and York...	ON	5,741,400	7,408,000	1,666,600
3	Detroit Metro Detroit The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is the metropolitan area located in Southeast Michigan centered on the city of Detroit which shares an international border with Windsor, Ontario. The Detroit metropolitan area is the second largest U.S. metropolitan area...	MI	5,327,764	6,191,000	863,236
4	Montreal	QC	3,859,300	4,246,931	387,631
5	Minneapolis – Saint Paul	MN-WI	3,604,460	4,031,000	426,540
6	St. Louis	MO-IL	2,892,874	3,049,000	156,126
7	Cleveland Greater Cleveland Greater Cleveland is a nickname for the metropolitan area surrounding Cleveland, Ohio and is part of what used to be the Connecticut Western Reserve.Northeast Ohio refers to a similar but substantially larger area as described below...	OH	2,891,988	3,172,000	280,012
8	Pittsburgh	PA	2,445,117	2,168,818	-267,299
9	Cincinnati	OH-KY-IN	2,214,954	2,448,000	233,046
10	Kansas City Kansas City Metropolitan Area The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is a fifteen-county metropolitan area that is anchored by Kansas City, Missouri and is bisected by the border between the states of Missouri and Kansas. As of the 2010 Census, the metropolitan area has a population of 2,035,334. The metropolitan area is the...	MO-KS	2,067,585	2,374,900	307,315
11	Indianapolis	IN	2,064,870	2,406,000	341,130
12	Columbus	OH	2,031,229	2,446,450	415,221
13	Milwaukee Milwaukee metropolitan area The Milwaukee–Racine–Waukesha metropolitan area is an urban area identified by the U.S. Census Bureau containing five counties in southeastern Wisconsin: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Washington and Ozaukee...	WI	1,760,268	1,913,000	157,732
14	Ottawa – Gatineau National Capital Region (Canada) The National Capital Region, also referred to as Canada's Capital Region, is an official federal designation for the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Ontario, the neighbouring city of Gatineau, Quebec, and surrounding urban and rural communities....	ON-QC	1,451,415	1,596,556	145,141
15	Louisville Louisville metropolitan area The Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area, commonly called the Louisville metropolitan area or Kentuckiana, is the 42nd largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States...	KY-IN	1,395,634	1,602,456	206,822
16	Grand Rapids Grand Rapids metropolitan area The metropolitan area surrounds the central city of Grand Rapids, Michigan.Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is located in the outskirts of Grand Rapids,the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the DeVos Place Convention Center both in downtown Grand Rapids....	MI	1,327,366	1,530,000	202,634
17	Buffalo	NY	1,203,493	1,040,400	-163,093
18	Rochester Rochester, New York metropolitan area The Rochester, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area , as defined by the United States Census Bureau, is an area consisting of five counties in Western New York, anchored by the city of Rochester...	NY	1,149,653	1,078,600	-71,053
19	Dayton	OH	1,066,261	1,066,261	0
20	Hamilton Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...	ON	740,200	954,858	214,658
21	Toledo	OH-MI	672,220	672,220	0
22	Madison Madison metropolitan area The Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, is an area consisting of three counties in Wisconsin, anchored by the city of Madison. As of the 2010 census, the MSA had a population of 568,593.-Definitions:...	WI	628,947	820,483	191,563
23	Lansing	MI	523,609	547,325	23,716
24	Kitchener – Waterloo Regional Municipality of Waterloo The Regional Municipality of Waterloo is a regional municipality located in Southern Ontario, Canada. It consists of the cities of Kitchener, Cambridge, and Waterloo, and the townships of Wellesley, Woolwich, Wilmot, and North Dumfries. It is often referred to as the Region of Waterloo or just...	ON	492,400	635,196	142,796
25	London London, Ontario London is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...	ON	492,200	634,938	142,738
26	Fort Wayne	IN	414,315	414,315	0
27	St. Catharines – Niagara	ON	404,400	521,676	117,276
28	Davenport-Rock Island-Moline Quad Cities The Quad Cities is a group of five cities straddling the Mississippi River on the Iowa–Illinois boundary. These cities, Davenport and Bettendorf and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline , are the center of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Area, which, as of 2010, had an estimated population of...	IA-IL	379,690	398,240	18,550
	Total CSA/CMA of major metro areas	US-Canada	58,764,771	64,918,029	6,153,258

History of the concept

Economy

Population centers

See also