French geographer Jean Gottmann (1915-1994) studied the northeastern
United States during the 1950s and published a book in 1961 that
described the region as a vast metropolitan area over 500 miles long
stretching from Boston in the north to Washington, D.C. in the south.
This area (and the title of Gottmann's book) is Megalopolis.
The term Megalopolis is derived from Greek and means "very large city." A
group of Ancient Greeks actually planned to construct a huge city on
the Peloponnese Peninsula. Their plan didn't work out but the small city
of Megalopolis was constructed and exists to this day.
Gottmann's Megalopolis (sometimes referred to as BosWash for the
northern and southern tips of the area) is a very large functional urban
region that "provides the whole of America with so many essential
services, of the sort a community used to obtain in its 'downtown'
section, that it may well deserve the nickname of 'Main Street of the
nation.'" (Gottmann, 8) The Megalopolitan area of BosWash is a
governmental center, banking center, media center, academic center, and
until recently, an immigration center (a position usurped by Los Angeles
in recent years).
Acknowledging that while, "a good deal of the land in the 'twilight
areas' between the cities remains green, either still farmed or wooded,
matters little to the continuity of Megalopolis," (Gottmann, 42)
Gottmann expressed that it was the economic activity and the
transportation, commuting, and communication linkages within Megalopolis
that mattered most.
