gottmann_megalopolis or the urbanization of the northeastern seaboard

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Clark University

Megalopolis or the Urbanization of the Northeastern SeaboardAuthor(s): Jean GottmannSource: Economic Geography, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1957), pp. 189-200Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/142307

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ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYVOL. 33 JULY, 1957 No. 3

MEGALOPOLISOR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD

Jean GottmannDr. Gottmann, Professor at the School of Political Science, University

of Paris, is on leave to directfor The TwentiethCentury Fund a researchproject, "A Study of Megalopolis." Ile is also a memberof the Institutefor Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J.nHE frequency of large urban

units scattered along the Atlan-tic seaboard in the northeastern

United States was a striking realizationto the foreigner who first visited thearea, even 15 years ago. In February,1942, after a first trip from New Yorkto Washington, the writer, being askedby Isaiah Bowman in Baltimore whatwas the most striking impression he hadhad as a geographer in his first monthsin this country, answered: "The densityof great cities along this coast, fromBoston to Washington. "

In 1950, on the basis of the new cen-sus, the Bureau of the Census prepareda map, later published as an illustrationto a booklet of statistics on State Eco-nomic Areas, which showed clearly thecontinuity of an area of "metropolitan"economy from a little north of Bostonto a little south of Washington, moreprecisely from Hillsborough County inNew Hampshire to Fairfax County inVirginia. This seemed to be a firststatistical demonstration on the mapof the existence of a continuous stretchof urban and suburban areas, the mainNE-SW axis of which was about 600

miles long, and within the frame ofwhich dwelt even in 1950 some 30million people.In the geography of the distributionof habitat this was a phenomenon uniqueby its size not only in America but in theworld. It resulted obviously from thecoalescence, recently achieved, of achain of metropolitan areas, each ofwhich grew around a substantial urbannucleus. The super-metropolitan char-acter of this vast area, the greatestsuch growth ever observed, called fora special name. We chose the wordMegalopolis,' of Greek origin, and listed

1 The term Megalopolis was preferred to othersafter careful consideration of various possibilities.We wish to express our appreciation for the helpreceived in this matter from several distinguishedclassicists at the Institute for Advanced Study,especially from Professors Hartold Cherniss,Benjamin Merritt, and the late Jacob Hammer."Megalopolis" was used by various authors inconnection with quite different meanings:ancient philosophers described sometimes by itthe "world of ideas"; recently Lewis Mumfordused it to describe the whole trend towards largecities. We have felt it appropriate to describea unique geographical region, characterizedmore than any other by enormous urban andmetropolitan growth, and to assess the presentstatus of a vast region in the northeastern sea-board section of the United States. Our statisti-cal definition as on the maps is based on themap accompanying the Bureau of the Censuspublication: State Economic Areas by Donald J.Bogue, Washington, 1951.


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190 ECONOMICGEOGRAPHYin Webster's dictionary as meaning"a very large city."Indeed, the name "Megalopolis" ap-pears on modern maps of Greece, desig-nating a plateau in the Peloponnesus.A city was established there in ancienttimes, the founders of which dreamtof a great future for it and of an enor-mous size. But the Greek town ofMegalopolis never grew to be much ofa city. What has developed now in thenortheastern seaboard surpasses every-thing dreamers of the past may havevisualized. Aristotle, however, wrotein his Politics: "When are men livingin the same place to be regarded as asingle city? What is the limit? Cer-tainly not the wall of the city, for youmight surround all Peloponnesus with awall. Like this, we may say, is Babylonand every city that has the compass of anation rather than a city." (III, 3,1276a, 25.)

A few years ago the reviewer of a bookon the history of eastern railroads re-ferred to the stretch of land along thetracks of the Pennsylvania and Balti-more and Ohio Railroads from New YorkCity to Washington, D.C., as the"Main Street" of the nation. To bequite correct, such a "Main Street"ought to be prolonged along the railtracks from New York City to Boston.There is, however, some truth in thissymbolical expression. This section ofU.S. 1 has come to assume within theAmerican nation a special function, ora whole group of intertwined functions,which is hinted at in less urbanizedareas by the concept of Main Street.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF A STUDY OF

MEGALOPOLIS?Geographers are of course convincedof the value of a study describing agiven geographic region endowed withsome unity and originality, and thus

differentiated from neighboring areas.Although such a region may be uniquein the world, investigating its features,problems, and structure has generallybeen recognized as a worthwhile enter-prise. As the data describing uniquecases piled up, the endeavor developedin the geographical profession to lookfor general principles and for studies ofcases, the outcome of which would bemore immediately valuable because theyare applicable to some extent in morethan one area or place.Although unique today, Megalopolisobviously has been and still is anextraordinarily interesting laboratoryin vivo where much of what may wellbe accepted as the "normalcies" of theadvanced civilization of the latter partof the twentieth century is slowly shap-ing. It still is too early to assess the fullmeaning of a study of Megalopolis inthe frame we have outlined. The studymust first be carried out. The manyquestions it involves could not belisted, let alone discussed, in such a briefarticle. A few hints may be given, how-ever, of what such a survey could meanand of the main problems it could tackle.By its size and mass, Megalopolis isboth an exceptional growth and apioneer area; exceptional, for nowhereelse could one find another concentra-tion of population, of industrial andcommercial facilities, of financial wealthand cultural activities, comparable to it.However, in several other points inAmerica and on other continents growthof continuously urbanized spaces maybe observed. More of such enormous"metropolitan" bodies can be expectedto arise as the evolution, already welladvanced in and around New York,Philadelphia, Boston, Washington,reaches other cities and their environs.In this sense Megalopolis is a pioneerarea: the processes which develop there-in will help toward an understanding of,


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MEGALOPOLIS OR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD 191and will forecast ways and obstacles to,urban growth in various other parts.In fact Megalopolis has already beenpioneering in the organization of urbanlife for quite some time. Such featuresas skyscrapers, building elevators, cityand suburban networks of trains, trafficlights, and one-way streets started hereon a large scale to gain later world-wideadoption. Megalopolis grew up fromthe network provided by the earlymushrooming of sea-trading towns alongthe coast from Boston to New York andthen, along the Fall line, from New Yorkto Washington. The size of its principalurban nuclei, especially New York andPhiladelphia, caused the subsequentmushrooming of suburbs filling in thespaces between the larger cities. JamesMadison defined New Jersey as a "barreltapped at both ends"; that this state'sfunction was essentially to link the areaof New York and Philadelphia wasapparently understood by such a cleverobserver at the end of the eighteenthcentury. But the polynuclear originof Megalopolis is beginning to berepeated in other regions. A vasturban and suburban area is rapidlyexpanding around Los Angeles, forinstance; inland it has already reached,in fact, San Bernardino; it may unitewith San Diego on the coast. AroundChicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan,another impressive urban continuityis shaping. The metropolitan areasstretching in Ohio between Clevelandand Pittsburgh are close to coalescence;and the St. Lawrence Seaway, onceopened, may accelerate and expandthese trends in the area south of LakesErie and Ontario. And as more metro-politan areas are pushing forth suburbantentacles one towards another through-out the nation, additional but smallerMegalopolis-like clusters will be formed.This is a process involving considerablechanges in the American modes of living.

F I~~~~~~

Lak? Ontarw Bo~~~~~~~~ston

Scranto NewYor

..-Fa, 1mor- \~~~DELAWAREoWadvangt of th

M E SMEGALOPOLISNorfolk 1950

10MILES

FIG. 1.

The trends mnaybecome better under-stoodslc the haseof the largest andmost advanced of these areas, thepresent Megalopolis, is thoroughly ana-lyzed.

WHATARE THE, PROBLEMS OFMEGALOPOLIS?

Within such a vast area the problemsare, of course, many and diversified.It may not be necessary, nor very useful,to survey all of them, in their localvariety, in the different parts of Mega-lopolis. A few basic questions must,however, be asked: How did Megalopo-lis happen to arise and with such a shape?What are the present main functions ofthis area, its role within the Americaneconomy and1the North Atlantic system


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192 EcONOMic GEOGRAPHYof relations? What are the presentproblems of internal organizations, andwhat solutions have been attempted?Here are three sets of questions, eachof which requires detailed consideration,involving a great deal of research.Megalopolis' growth in the past sumsup a good part of the economic historyof the United States. It has not oftenbeen examined as to how the sequenceof events and trends in the past growthof the nation affected local develop-ments. Although it is, in area, only asmall section of the Northeast, Megalop-olis had a crucial part in determiningnational trends; on the other hand,the main swings of its own history wereusually the consequence of shifts innational policies.

Why was Megalopolis' growththroughout its history more rapid andcontinuous than that of many otherurban areas in the world? This questionleads into an examination of the factorsmotivating or determining urban expan-sion in a given area. In a first inquiryconcerning the matter conducted bythis writer a few years ago were listedsome forty-odd factors that in differentways and at different periods helpedthe upbuilding of Megalopolis. The twomajor among these factors appear to be,on the one hand, the polynuclear originand the part played by the series ofnortheastern seaboard cities as a hingeof the American economy. The federalorganization of government and thedivision of the Atlantic seaboard into somany states (each with access to Tide-water) that engaged in a fruitful rivalrymade all nuclei compete one with an-other until their growth joined themtogether.The role of the "hinge" is more dif-ficult to perceive, but is easily demon-strated by the material accumulatedin regional economic history. This sea-board had from the inception of the

United States the opportunity and theresponsibility of serving both as anoceanic facade for relations abroad andas a springboard for the settlement anddevelopment of the continent inland.At different periods the main weight ofthe northeastern interests oscillated fromsea trade to continental developmentand back again; in New England one ofthese oscillations in the beginning ofthe nineteenth century was defined asthe period when the main interestshifted "from the wharf to the water-fall. " In many towns which, on theFall line, were later integrated with thearea of Megalopolis, wharf and waterfallwere very close to one another. Whetherthe general trends of the Americaneconomy threw the door open towardsthe outside or closed it to turn the mainendeavors inland, the hinge remainedfixed at the series of eastern cities,extending from Boston to Washington,which alone had the geographical posi-tion, the authority, the capital, and theskill to elaborate such policies and putthem into application.2The inheritance of the past stillinfluences heavily present situationsand trends. Whether the eastern sea-board will keep the monopoly of the"hinge" advantages after the St. Law-rence Seaway is completed remains aburning question. However, the facultyof direct access to the sea was only oneof many factors which favoredMegalopolis and the others may stilloperate in the future. The relativepart played by these various factors inshaping the present would be an im-portant and suggestive aspect in thestudy of Megalopolis' historical back-ground.The present functions of Megalopolis

2 See the historical sketch of the " hinge "function in J. Gottman: "La region charnierede leconomie americaine," Revue de la PorteOceane, Le Havre, VII, Nos. 71 and 72, March,1951, pp. 9-14, and April, 1951, pp. 11-20.


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MEGALOPOLIS OR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD 193would be the next step in the proposedresearch. These functions are several;there is, of course, a residential oneexpressed in the total figure of thepopulation; but how do the inhabitantsmake a living and why do they have tobe concentrated in this area?Megalopolis arose as a grouping ofthe main seaports, commercial centers,and manufacturing activities in theUnited States. To a large extent themaritime facade function still is carriedon: most of the seaborne foreign tradeof the country goes through Megalopo-lis' harbors. The manufacturingfunctionnever stopped developing within thearea, although many industries havebeen brought into operation in othersections of the United States. Mtegalop-olis seems to specialize rather in themore delicate finishing industries andin those involving a great deal oflaboratory work and research. How-ever, a good number of large plants (ironand steel, chemical and metallurgicalindustries) have been erected within thelast 20 years in this same area. Whatthe balance is and how much specializa-tion is really shaping up would beinteresting to ascertain.The commercialand financial functionsremain extremely important for Mega-lopolis. Despite decentralization trendsmany times stressed and advocated, thisarea remains a decisive one for theAmerican economy as well as for inter-national financial relations. If NewYork City is no longer the financialcapital it was earlier in the century, it isbecause much of that function migratedto Washington, with the increasing roleof federal authorities in the managementof the nation's business. As a market,for goods as well as for money, Mega-lopolis as a whole still dominates therest of the national territory. Not onlydoes it comprise one-fifth of the nation:this fifth is obviously the best paid and

the wealthiest. Though other centersof concentrated wealth have arisen anddeveloped elsewhere, especially on theWest Coast and along the Great Lakes'shores, none can yet boast a massapproaching that of the Boston-Wash-ington region. Nor has any had such atraditional grouping of financial andsocial activities as that suggested bysome of New York's thoroughfares:Wall Street, Park Avenue, or FifthAvenue, all fractions of the nationalMain Street.Whether or not related to the socialstratification and the abundance ofmoney in the area, Megalopolis acquiredand retained a quite remarkable func-tion of cultural leadership, despite theAmerican endeavor at decentralization.Here are found the best-known univer-sities, the better-equipped laboratories,the greatest density of learned institu-tions and large libraries in NorthAmerica, and probably in the presentworld. The vast majority of nationally-read periodicals and important publish-ing houses have their editorial offices inMegalopolis; some newspapers from thisarea have even a nationwide distribu-tion, especially for their Sunday editions.The concentration of cultural leadershipmakes it difficult for institutions suchas the Ford Foundation or the R.C.A.Research Laboratories to operate fromheadquarters located far from Megalop-olis. This leadership is even moreevident in the arts: whether theater,music, or galleries, the concentrationattained in this area has no match else-where in America.

Finally, the question may arise, andwould be more difficult to answer, asto the actual weight of Megalopolis inthe political life of the country. Al-though the national capital is part of it,this region is only one-fifth of the nationand its votes do not necessarily make the


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194 ECONomic GEOGRAPHY

NE W Y O R K .i

EW JER;SEY

PERGNNSLANAA~~~MEALOOIDEW.ESTY O OUAIN,15E~~~Bonte (idpnetcte.xldd

-----O7~~~~~~~~~~~~Lsha60',VIRKGINIA

VIRGINIA if . t ~~~~~~~61o 100> ~~~~~101o 250

__ . - ~~~~~~~~More than ,0NORTHCAROLINA . 0 , , MI100

FIG. 2.decision of major states, parts of whichare megalopolitan, such as New Yorkand Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Mega-lopolis has a definite political patternwhich differs from that of the surround-ing northeastern country.Having thus analyzed the past growthand present functions of Megalopolis,

we come to its actual problems. Theseare many. Two categories of problems,particularly pressing in all downtownsections of modern cities, have attractedattention and have been given muchstudy: the traffic difficulties and theslums. Two other problems are nowa-days receiving increasing attention in


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MEGALOPOLIS OR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD 195VERONT

NWHAMPSHIRE

MASSACHUSETTS| ~~~~NEW YORK

RHOE~'SAN_-~~~~ _ | ll~~~~~lCTI UT

PENNSYLVANIA _f~~~~~~E JERSEY

_NCESE IN POPULA-TION, 1940-1950.'.-."B cou nt ies ( independ ent cities exclIuded )

VIRGINIA

G 3Over 100

NORTHCAROLINA O., 100 MILES|

FIG. 3.competent quarters: water supply andlocal government. Both appear inade-quately set to answer the present needsof the huge cities and their quicklyexpanding suburbs. The rapidly mush-rooming metropolitan commissions andcommittees seem to herald already deepchanges forthcoming in the traditional

concepts and practices of local govern-ment. Interstate compacts may ariseto help solve transportation problems(such as the Port of New York Author-ity); experiments in metropolitan gov-ernment may be more difficult to startin parts of Megalopolis because of themass and variety of interests at stake-


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196 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHYbut the very difficulties make everyattempt more significant.Megalopolis as a unit has taken shapeonly within the last few years. Its lawsand customs will take much longer toevolve into new forms better adaptedto the needs and resources of such anenormous urban territory. A survey ofthe new problems, in their variety,should nevertheless be of some helpeven at this time. While legislationand institutions change slowly, modes ofliving evolve far more rapidly. Novelistshave satirized certain aspects of mega-lopolitan life: a quarter century afterthe "cliff-dwellers" were strongly estab-lished on Fifth and Park Avenues, wehear about the "exurbanites. " Thebasic fact is the double trend of thelarge cities: part of the populationmoves out and commutes from an "outersuburbia" which often extends 50 milesbeyond; and parts of the cities are con-verted into immense apartment housegroupings (paradoxically sometimescalled "villages"). These two trendsare particularly clear in Manhattanand in Washington, but they are gainingother big nuclei of Megalopolis as well.The threat of the recent spread ofjuvenile delinquency seems to increasethe migration of families to the peripheryof metropolitan areas. The new modeof life involves more daily traveling,more traffic jams, and more highwaysoutside the downtown areas; a redis-tribution of marketing channels (illus-trated by proliferating suburban shop-ping centers and department storebranches); some changes in the type ofgoods needed; an increasing interest inzoning, gardening, and nature con-servation.Because more megalopolitan, the wayof life of an increasing proportion of thepopulation becomes more country-likealthough not really rural. The Bureauof the Census has had to revise several

times its standards for the definition ofmetropolitan areas; the criteria of inte-gration with the central urban districtinclude such measurements as the pro-portion of commuters and the averagenumber of telephone calls per subscriberfrom a suburban county to the centralcounty of the area, etc. In 1950 theBureau even had to revise its definitionof "urban territory" and introducedthe term "urbanized areas" to providefor a better separation between urbanand rural territory in the vicinity oflarge cities, especially within metro-politan areas. New suburban types offarming are also developing, consistingboth of a few highly mechanized andspecialized large enterprises (such as thetruck farming on Long Island) and ascattering of numerous small farmsinhabited by people working in thecities and deriving their income fromnonagricultural occupations.

The city, in the days of yore, was awell-defined, densely settled territory,often surrounded by walls or palisades.Some time ago it broke out of such rigidframes and developed outlying sections,extra-muros. In its most recent stageof growth, already characteristic ofMegalopolis, it extends out on a rapidlyexpanding scale, along highways andrural roads, mixing uses of land thatlook either rural or urban, encirclingvast areas which remain "green" (andwhich some wise endeavors attempt topreserve as recreation space for thefuture), creating a completely newpattern of living and of regional inter-dependence between communities.The coming of age of Megalopolisthus creates, besides problems in legisla-tion, traffic, engineering, marketing, etc.,also new psychological problems: peoplehave more difficulty thinking along thetraditional lines of division into stateswhen megalopolitan sections of differentstates are much more integrated in


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MEGALOPOLIS OR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD 197daily life than they could be with up-state areas of the same "Common-wealth "; people have also some difficultyadapting themselves to such a scatteredway of life; and officials are often lostwhen trying to classify according to thetraditional categories of urban, rural,rural non-farm, farming, etc. Such are,too briefly reviewed, the various prob-lems of Megalopolis. They are worthanalyzing for the conclusions that mayfollow.LESSONS FROM AN ANALYSIS OF THE

MEGALOPOLITAN PROCESSA detailed analysis of Megalopolis, asit appears today, seems a worthwhileenterprise despite the present uniquecharacter of this region. Its trendsacquire immediate national, and some-times international, significance by thesheer size and weight of Megalopolis ineconomic and social matters. But it is

also, as has been shown, a pioneeringarea in terms of urbanization. What isobserved and experimented with heremay serve, though on a smaller scaleand in many cases only after some time,to avoid delays and errors in othergrowing urban areas. It may helpimprove our management of the intricateprocess of urbanization.This process is an old one and hasgreatly contributed, as many authorshave shown, to the growth of westerncivilization. Far from having reachedits optimum, in the middle of thetwentieth century, the process of urbani-zation accelerated its pace. The UnitedStates has demonstrated that enoughagricultural commodities of all kindscan be produced for a populous nation,enjoying a high standard of living, bythe work of only one-eighth of the totalpopulation. This proportion of thefarmers within the nation may andprobably will be further reduced. Thus90 per cent of a prosperous nation must

live from nonagricultural pursuits, butnot in congested slums. This momen-tous evolution, one of the major Ameri-can contributions to this century, lead-ing to semiurbanized status, is mostadvanced in Megalopolis.3The new forms thus attained, theintensity of the problems, the solutionsattempted, must be compared to whathappens in all these respects in otherprincipal metropolitan areas in theUnited States and perhaps in Canada.A clearer mode of classification for bothproblems and possible solutions maythus be worked out, based on factualobservation rather than generalizedtheory. The whole survey may helpto evaluate this new expanding frontierof the American economy: the urbaniza-tion of the land.Outside the North American continentmany other countries are already facedwith a similar acceleration of the processof urbanization. Their policies couldgreatly benefit from a full analysis ofMegalopolis today and its comparisonwith other urban growths in America.None of the continuous chains ofmetropolitan areas or conurbations shap-ing now in other parts of the world isindeed comparable in size or shape asyet to the American Megalopolis. Theone most nearly approaching it, whichmay perhaps coalesce sometime withinthe next 20 years, would be in ouropinion in northwestern Europe, fromAmsterdam to Paris, including perhapsa bulge eastwards as far as the Ruhrand Cologne along the Rhine and Meuserivers.

Another possible super-metropolitansystem of this kind could well be formingin England. A giant U-shaped urban

3See J. Gottmann: L'A merique, Paris, Hach-ette, 1954, 2nd ed. revised, pp. 170-177 and 244-246; also "La vile americaine," in Geographia,Paris, No. 48, September 1955, pp. 9-14; andVirginia at Mid-Century, New York, 1955,pp. 473-479.


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198 EcONoMic GEOGRAPHYchain surrounds the southern Pennines,extending from Liverpool and Man-chester to Leeds and Bradford, viaBirmingham and Sheffield. This U maysome day unite southwards with theexpanding suburbs of Greater London.Then the whole system may enter themegalopolitan family. It would remain,nevertheless, quite different from Mega-lopolis on the northeastern seaboard.Each large area of such kind will longkeep its originality, resulting from itsown past and its relation to a given zoneof civilization. Large urbanized areasdo not need, however, to grow up tomegalopolitan size to be able to profitby the lessons in metropolitan organiza-tion obtained in Megalopolis.How FAR COULD MEGALOPOLIS GROW?

Several important studies of themetropolitan areas around New YorkCity, Philadelphia, etc., are now inprogress. These surveys will attemptto forecast future growth, by projectingcurves for the next 10 to 25 years.Urban and suburban territory is expand-ing at a fast pace in the United States,and this pace has been notably acceler-ated in recent years. A vast area likeMegalopolis would not have arisen with-out it. The time has perhaps come toask once more the question: How farcould Megalopolis grow? And in whichdirections?In 1955, a group of city planners atYale University began to speak about acitylike, well-knit system extending fromPortland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia.Such may be the impression providedby road transportation maps. Thiswriter's observations on completion ofa study of Virginia by January, 1955,did not seem to warrant as yet theabsorption into Megalopolis of morethan a few counties in northern Virginia.Richmond and the Hampton Roads area

had not yet been consolidated with theWashington-to-Boston more intenselyurbanized system. Beyond eastern Mas-sachusetts northwards, urbanization wasfelt mainly in the summer as a sea-sonal migration of vacationing or semi-vacationing people from Megalopolis.However, there could be no doubt thatMegalopolis is daily expanding its terri-torial scope. Our definition (see Fig. 1)based on the census of 1950 is certainlyan underestimation in area for 1957.Expansion proceeds in many direc-tions, of course, all around the outerfringes. Consolidation of the urban landuse within the 1950 limits goes on at thesame time. The existing densities ofpopulation (see Fig. 2) and the trendsof increase of this density by countiesin the recent past (see Fig. 3) concur instressing a relative saturation of mostof the areas within Megalopolis betweenPhiladelphia and Boston. Although agreat deal of new construction still goeson even in those parts, the more strikingincreases appear in the southern sectionof Megalopolis and an expansion in theVirginian Tidewater and northern Pied-mont seems unavoidable.Thus Megalopolis is pushing south-wards and southwestwards. It mayindeed reach Richmond and Norfolksome day in the foreseeable future.Another set of directions, this timeinland, and breaking away from thefateful axis of U.S. 1, may be inferredfrom an attentive examination of thedistribution already in 1950 of themetropolitan areas in the northeasternsection of the United States, betweenthe Atlantic seaboard, the Great Lakesand the Ohio Valley (see Fig. 4). Arather impressive density of such metro-politan areas is found inland along theroute of the New York Central Railroadup the Hudson-Mohawk route and thesouthern shores of Lakes Erie andOntario. Then from Cleveland south-


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MEGALOPOLIS OR THE URBANIZATION OF THE NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD 199'I,}C A N A D A -

77~~~~~~/

Lake\HuronLake Boston'

ew YrkMEGALOPOLIS

Washington

/ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~ ~Megalopolisf 1950No~~Ik ~Countiesn otherNo me~~~tropolitanreas

0MILES10FIG.S------ 4,.? I 00

FIG.4.wards a little interrupted chain extendstowards Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Be-tween Megalopolis on one hand and thetrans-Appalachian urbanized and indus-trialized areas, the valleys and ridgesof the Appalachian Mountains cause aclearcut break. But if the Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Syracuse-Albany chain wouldcome to be consolidated, even mountainranges could be overcome and anenormous sort of annular megalopolitansystem could arise; the St. LawrenceSeaway, if it developed into a majorartery of navigation, could precipitatesuch a trend.

A much smaller but curiously "an-nular" urban system is already shaping

in the Netherlands, as after the coales-cence of the cities along the main sea-board axis of Holland, from Amsterdamto Rotterdam, urbanization is gaininginland, along the Rhine from Rotterdamto Arnhem, and along roads and canalsfrom Amsterdam to Utrecht. The co-alescence between Arnhem and Utrechtis on its way. In England the U-shapedchain of the metropolitan type outlinedabove from Manchester to Leeds hasnot been filled up in between these twocities along the shortest line into anotherannular formation because of the topo-graphical obstacle of the Pennine range,still an empty area. This obstacle iscomparable, though it is on a much


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200 ECONOMic GEOGRAPHYsmaller scale, to the Appalachian ridgesback of Megalopolis.Other trends of megalopolitan expan-sion in territory could be discussedeither inside the mountainous obstacleitself or northeastwards in the seaboardarea. But these trends are definitelyseasonal. In the past Megalopolis hasin fact emptied the neighboring moun-tains, northern New England, and evento some extent the province of Quebecin Canada by attracting millions ofpeople from difficult rural areas, lessrich in opportunity. Now, with therise of the standard of living, with morepeople taking longer summer vacations,the cooler New England seashore orhills, the Appalachian plateaus, attracta sort of transhuzmanceof city folks tosummer pastures. This transhumanceseems to be constantly on the increaseand creates for the summer months long-range commuting problems. If the

contiguous areas, where the majority ofthe permanent population lives from theproceeds of summer residents and tour-ists, were to be included in the territorialconcept of Megalopolis, the limits of ourarea would have to be rapidly and sub-stantially enlarged.Urban land utilization is indeeddevouring land fast, in many ways.The old habit of considering it as aminor occupant of space will soon haveto be revised. Our modern civilizationhas found the means to grow more andmore agricultural products, to raise moreand more livestock, on less space; butindustrial, commercial, and residentialuses are constantly increasing their spacerequirements. Our generation is proba-bly witnessing the beginning of a greatrevolution in the geography of land use.Megalopolis heralds a new era in thedistribution of habitat and economicactivities.

gottmann_megalopolis or the urbanization of the northeastern seaboard

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