Northeast Megalopolis - History

History

The Eastern coast of the United States of America, due to its proximity to Europe, was among the first regions of the continent to be widely settled by Europeans. Over time, the cities and towns founded here had the advantage of age over most other parts of the US. However, it was the Northeast in particular that developed most rapidly, owing to a number of fortuitous circumstances.

While possessing neither particularly rich soil - one prominent exception being New England's Connecticut River Valley - nor exceptional mineral wealth, the region is well-suited enough to support some levels of both agriculture and mining. The climate is also temperate and not particularly prone to hurricanes or tropical storms, which increase further south. However, the most important factor was the “interpenetration of land and sea,” which makes for exceptional harbors, such as those at Chesapeake Bay, the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Providence, and Boston Harbor. The coastline to the north is rockier and less sheltered, and to the South is smooth and does not feature as many bays and inlets that function as natural harbors. Also featured are a large number of navigable rivers that lead deeper into the heartlands, such as the Delaware River and Connecticut River, which both support large populations. Therefore, while other parts of the country exceeded the region in raw resource value, they were not as easily accessible, and often, access to them necessarily had to pass through the Northeast first.

By 1800, there were four cities in the United States that had populations of over 25,000: Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston, all within the region. By 1850, New York and Philadelphia alone had over 300,000 residents, while Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, and New Orleans had over 100,000: five were within one 400-mile strip, while the last two were each four hundred miles away from the next closest metropolis. The immense concentration of people in one relatively densely-packed area gave that region considerable sway through population density alone over the rest of the nation, which was solidified when Washington, DC, only 35 miles southwest of Baltimore, was made the capital in 1800. According to Gottmann, capital cities "will tend to create for and around the seats of power a certain kind of built environment, singularly endowed, for instance, with monumentality, stressing status and ritual, a trait that will increase with duration." The transportation and telecommunications infrastructure that the capital city mandated also spilled over into the rest of the strip.

Additionally, the proximity to Europe, as well as the prominence of Ellis Island as an immigrant processing center, made New York especially but also the cities nearby a “landing wharf for European immigrants,” who represented an ever-replenished supply of diversity of thought and determined workers. By contrast, the other major source of trans-oceanic immigrants was China, which was significantly farther from the US’s West Coast than Europe was from the East, and whose ethnicity made them targets of racial discrimination, creating barriers to their seamless integration into American society.

By 1950, the region held over a fifth of the total U.S. population, with a density nearly 15 times that of the national average.