Brookings Mountain West Publications Publications (BMW) 2005 Beyond Megalopolis: Exploring America’s New “Megapolitan” Geography Robert E. Lang Brookings Mountain West, [email protected] Dawn Dhavale Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/brookings_pubs Part of the Urban Studies Commons Repository Citation Lang, R. E., Dhavale, D. (2005). Beyond Megalopolis: Exploring America’s New “Megapolitan” Geography. 1-33. Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/brookings_pubs/38 This Report is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Report in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Report has been accepted for inclusion in Brookings Mountain West Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE CENSUS REPORT SERIES Census Report 05:01 (May 2005) Beyond Megalopolis: Exploring America’s New “Megapolitan” Geography Robert E. Lang Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech Dawn Dhavale Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech “... the ten Main Findings and Observations Megapolitans • The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech identifi es ten US “Megapolitan have a Areas”— clustered networks of metropolitan areas that exceed 10 million population total residents (or will pass that mark by 2040). equal to • Six Megapolitan Areas lie in the eastern half of the United States, while four more are found in the West. France, • Megapolitan Areas extend into 35 states, including every state east of the Germany, and Mississippi River except Vermont. the United • Sixty percent of the Census Bureau’s “Consolidated Statistical Areas” are Kingdom found in Megapolitan Areas, as are 39 of the nation’s 50 most populous metropolitan areas. combined, • As of 2003, Megapolitan Areas contained less than a fi fth of all land area in or about the lower 48 states, but captured more than two-thirds of total US population 202 million with almost 200 million people. residents in • Megapolitan Areas are expected to add 83 million people (or the current population of Germany) by 2040, accounting for seven in every ten new 2005.” Americans. • By 2040, a projected 33 trillion dollars will be spent on Megapolitan building construction. The fi gure represents over three quarters of all the capital that will be expended nationally on private real estate development. • In 2004, Democratic candidate John Kerry won the Megapolitan Area popular vote by 51.6 percent to 48.4 for President George W. Bush—or almost the exact reverse of the nation as a whole. Kerry received 46.4 million Megapolitan votes, while Bush won 43.5 million. • Megapolitan geography reframes many planning and public policy debates, touching on such issues as environmental impact, transportation, and urban sprawl. 2005 METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE AT VIRGINIA TECH § CENSUS REPORT SERIES BEYOND MEGALOPOLIS: EXPLORING AMERICA’S NEW “MEGAPOLITAN” GEOGRAPHY Introduction: From Megalopolis to Megapolitan inventiveness. By the time Gottmann “revisited” the megalopolis in the late 1980s (Gottmann 1987, ...the Megapolitan concept seems to have Gottmann and Harper 1990), he acknowledged popularized the idea that the modern cities are that several other US regions could qualify as better reviewed not in isolation, as centers of a Megapolitan. He noted especially the cases of the restricted area only, but rather as parts of “city- Midwest and West Coast, but also saw a nascent systems,” as participants in urban networks megalopolis forming in the South around Atlanta revolving in widening orbits. (1987). This study identifi es ten “Megapolitan Areas,” found in all regions of the country, not just Jean Gottmann (1987, p. 52) in the Northeast. Geographer Jean Gottmann, writing over two Gottmann’s work infl uenced academics but had no decades after publishing his infl uential book impact on the way the US Census Bureau defi nes Megalopolis (1961),1 understood the impact space, probably in part because at the time his that his thinking had on urban theory. Now, work discussed a single, unique region. But the two decades later still, a new trans-metropolitan idea of a functional trans-metropolitan geography geography is emerging that advances many of is one that warrants the Census Bureau’s attention. Gottmann’s ideas. Researchers in the United Regional economies now clearly extend beyond an States and Europe are proposing new methods for individual metro area. The Megapolitan concept classifying and tracking the megalopolis (Faludi recognizes this fact and suggests a new geography 2002 Yaro et al. 2004, Yaro and Carbonell 2004, to show which regional economies are linked. Carbonell and Yaro 2005). And while Gottmann was specifi cally referring to the northeastern When the Census Bureau does formalize a United States, the latest round of research extends geographic concept, it gains power. Consider a the concept to clusters of networked metropolitan recent example. Rural development advocates areas around the world. For example, European lobbied the Census Bureau for years to redefi ne researchers argue that large-scale urbanized areas more heavily settled rural areas as quasi- are the primary geographic unit for integration into metropolitan places (Lang and Dhavale 2004). In the world economy (Faludi 2002). The European 2003, the US Offi ce of Management and Budget Union [EU] currently has one well-defi ned “global (OMB), which oversees the Census Bureau, integration zone”—the area inside the so-called responded with the designation “Micropolitan “Pentagon” that runs from London to Hamburg Area.” Now micropolitans are literally on the map. to Munich to Milan to Paris and back to London Businesses, government agencies, and planners (Schon 2002). have new geography to work with. Publications took notice—Site Selection Magazine, for example, This Census Report updates Gottmann’s started a list of “Top Micropolitans” in which to megalopolis to current trends in American locate businesses (Starner 2005). trans-metropolitan development.2 Gottmann’s original study of the Northeast’s megalopolis Megapolitan Areas (or “Megas”) have a similar (1961) held that the region was unique in several potential. Once they are offi cially recognized, ways, including its large size and commercial private industries and government agencies 2005 METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE AT VIRGINIA TECH § CENSUS REPORT SERIES 2 BEYOND MEGALOPOLIS: EXPLORING AMERICA’S NEW “MEGAPOLITAN” GEOGRAPHY would embrace this new geography.3 And there extension that most investment should go to fi xing are clearly cases where the Megapolitan scale the metropolitan core. is the most logical one at which to address problems. Consider the recent debate over the Regionalists saw a radical shift in metropolitan fate of Amtrak—America’s National Railroad structure, away from a monocentric metropolis Passenger Corporation. The Bush administration and toward a more dispersed network of cities wants to eliminate all Amtrak funding in the and villages arrayed across a vast—although 2006 federal budget. Defending this action, the integrated—space they called the “urban region” US Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, (Fishman 2000). After the mid 20th century, most wrote in the New York Times that “The problem new urban growth occurred outside the regional is not that Americans don’t use trains; it is that core, which fueled the development of sprawling Amtrak has failed to keep up with the times, and often connected metropolitan areas. The stubbornly sticking to routes and services, even proposed “urban region” concept is thus the as they lose money and attract few users” (2005, progenitor of the Megapolitan Area. p. A19). Amtrak is a national rail system with a profi table line connecting big Northeastern cities In the year following the Mumford-Adams debate, that offsets losses on service to remote rural urban sociologist R.D. McKenzie (1933) published locals. As illustrated below, Megapolitan Areas The Metropolitan Community. This book formally have two qualities—concentrated populations and laid out the regionalist’s thinking. McKenzie often corridor form—that make them excellent argued that American metropolitan development: geographic units around which Amtrak could be reorganized. ...is tending to concentrate more and more in large regional aggregates. In every such The Evolving Megapolitan Idea aggregate, the population tends to subdivide and become multinucleated in a complex of centers The concept of a large-scale, trans-metropolitan that are economically integrated into a larger urban structure has been debated among planners unity (p. 1). since the early 20th century. The idea can be traced to a famous exchange in the pages of According to Thomas (2000), Gottmann’s the New Republic during the summer of 1932 Megalopolis: “effectively completed the analysis between noted theorist and critic Lewis Mumford of metropolitan regionalism undertaken by R.D. and Thomas Adams, director of the Region Plan McKenzie three decades earlier” (p. 50). Like of New York and Environs (now the Regional McKenzie, Gottmann emphasized economic Plan Association, or RPA).4 The