Northeast Megalopolis

The Northeast megalopolis is the heavily urbanized area of the United States stretching from the northern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts to the southern suburbs of Washington, D.C. On a map, the region appears almost as a straight line. As of 2000, the region supported 49.6 million people, about 17% of the U.S. population on less than 2% of the nation’s land area, with a population density of 931.3 people per square mile (359.6 people/km2), compared to the U.S. average of 80.5 per square mile 2 (31 people/km2). America 2050 projections expect the area to grow to 58.1 million people by 2025. French geographer Jean Gottmann popularized the term in his 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, his landmark study of the region. His conclusion was that the various cities contained in the region—especially Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston—are, while discrete and independent, uniquely tied to each other through the intermeshing of their suburban zones, acting in some ways as a unified super-city: a megalopolis. Since the publication of Gottmann’s book, the concept has gained prominence in both popular and academic media.