Megalopolis 50 Years On: The Transformation of a City Region

Abstract

This article examines Megalopolis 50 years after Gottmann's seminal study of the most urbanized region of the US Eastern Seaboard. His study provides an invaluable datum point, and we use it as a benchmark for reexamining the socio-spatial transformations of a city region. After redefining Megalopolis and showing major aggregate trends since 1950, we analyze 39 selected variables for place level census data for 2,353 places to perform a principal components analysis (PCA). Our analysis shows that Megalopolis remains a significant center for the nation's population and economic activity. A half century of urban restructuring demonstrates that the forces of urban decentralization have made the region a more fully suburbanized agglomeration. We reveal a complex socioeconomic pattern of a vast urban area structured by class, education, housing tenure, housing age, and race and ethnicity. The cluster analysis reveals five distinct clusters of urban places identified by our PCA: 'affluent places', 'places of poverty', 'Black middle class places', 'immigrant gateway places' and 'middle America places'. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Global urbanization as a shifting context for applying ecological science toward the sustainable city

“…Originally coined for the changes emerging in the Northeastern United States after World War II, it referred to the string of metropolises joined by rail, engaged in coal-powered industrial production, and linked by telephone and broadcast television (Gottmann 1961, McGrath andShane 2012). This kind of complex conurbation has continued to change, however (Dear and Flusty 1998, Lang and Dhavale 2005, Vicino et al 2007). For instance, American and European urban areas have become less dense at their cores, and have spread into their former hinterlands.…”

Megaregions: foundations, frailties, futures

“…We say overlooked because while Gottmann's work has traditionally been read for its contribution to informing debates around mapping and planning the evolving urban form, its structure and its anatomy, dig beneath the surface and you will find a putative relational economic geography with incipient ideas about the functioning of the urban system which he went on to develop and expand upon in subsequent works (Gottmann, 1976;Gottmann and Harper, 1990). Yet the dominant reading of Gottmann remains centred on his contribution to debates about the evolving urban form (see Lang and Knox, 2009;Morrill, 2006;Short, 2007;Vicino et al, 2007 for recent re-evaluations of the original megalopolis). This is significant because in the emerging body of work on megaregions, form-dominant approaches to megaregions appear more influential in the United States, whereas European accounts often adopt a more functionally-dominant perspective (see Section 1.3.2).…”

Are We in Boswash Yet? A Multi-Source Geodata Approach to Spatially Delimit Urban Corridors

“…Different approaches result in a great variation as to both actual extent (Table 1) and terminology: Bos-Wash, East Coast Metroplex, Northeast Megaregion, I-95 Corridor, BostWash (e.g., [68]). Not even the original description is unambiguous- [69] identified at least six modifications used by Gottmann. In Gottmann's map, the area stretches from southern New Hampshire to Richmond and Norfolk (Virginia) (see Figure 2a).…”

“…However at the same time, the population density has more than halved, indicating a high level of land consumption. Suburbanization and urban sprawl account for the main share of this decreased [66]; the total figure of the urban cores hardly changed at all [69]. Despite this variability in population and area, Megalopolis is still the densest region in the US, among the largest city regions in the world and a main driver of both national and international economy [67].…”

“…While [69] base their population figures on a consistent area for different periods of time (Table 2), Morrill [67,72] uses a dynamic spatial extent (Table 3): Over the course of 50 years, the Boswash area has quadrupled in size and almost doubled in population. However at the same time, the population density has more than halved, indicating a high level of land consumption.…”