Megalopolis

" Mégalopolis"

The concept was proposed by the French geographer Jean Gottmann in his book Megalopolis, The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard off the United States (1961, The MIT Near), which treated urban areas of the North-East of the the United States.

This last defines the " Mégalopolis" by the urban area extending between the Agglomeration from Boston and conurbation Baltimore - Washington, including/understanding the agglomerations of Hartford, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as a multitude of cities of more than 100.000 inhabitants, on the east coast of the the United States. One finds sometimes the expression BosWash (composed by the first syllable of the name of the two cities located at the ends). This urban unit is spread out over more than 800 km of North in the South, with a population estimated at a few 65/70 million inhabitants

Gottmann explains this concentration of population and capacities (policy, economic, legal, cultural) in this space by the succession of favorable economic situations: the colonization of the Northern frontage and importance of the maritime exchanges with Europe; victory of North over the South at the time of the American Civil War (eliminating competition from the ports of the South) and the presence of an urban elite.

The author even tends to make a Rome news of it: " (Mégalopolis) makes a little figure at the time present of what was imperial Rome of the ancient world. The Atlantic seems to be the Nostrum Pond of this Mégalopolis news to extraordinary dimensions ". This comparison anticipates the analysis which leads to the definition of the three centers of impulse of the Triade of Kenichi Ohmae, fifteen years later.

Other examples

American continent

In certain French school handbooks, the transborder conurbation of the area of the Big lakes, in North America, would correspond to a megalopolis of 65M inhabitants. It would join together metropolises American, Chicago, Detroit, and Canadian Montreal, Toronto, the Ville of Quebec and Ottawa, as well as ten of other less important cities.

Other megalopoles are in formation:

With the Brazil, the littoral zone ranging between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo can be perceived thus.
In the United States, the urban area located between San Francisco and San Diego, called SanSan too.

Continent of Asia

Since the years 1980, a second megalopolis was constituted with the Japan. This Japanese megalopolis extends on more than 1.000 km of Tōkyō, in the East, Kitakyūshū, the West, and gathers more than 100 million inhabitants, that is to say approximately 80% of the Japanese population out of 6% of the territory. This urban unit is regarded as the demographic and political heart Japan. It consists of three units: the hypercentre, around the administrative and economic capital of the country, Tokyo) (33M of hab.) and the area of the Kantō; then the secondary center connected by the Tokaido shinkansen to the hypercentre called Tōkaidō made up of Nagoya and the Kansai (Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto), said triangle Kinki (22M of hab.); and the third unit, in the west, made up of the littorals of the inland sea, industrial kind of appendix of the center.

Continent of Europe

The third recognized megalopolis is the European Mégalopole, formed by long urban whole the 1.500 km and densément populated (approx. 70 million inhabitants) between the London agglomeration , in England, and the area of Milan, in Italy, while passing by the Benelux and the the Ruhr. This metropolitan arc in median position in Europe is also named " Dorsal European " - called “blue Banana” by Brownish Roger, with the beginning of the year 1990, because of the form which appeared on an image satellitale. Sometimes in certain approaches, one associates in periphery the agglomerations of Paris and Frankfurt. This “dorsal” is the center of impulse in political and economic terms of the European Union, and dominates the outlying areas, less dynamic in demographic and economic terms of Europe.

However, this European dorsal is not completely homogeneous and could be divided into urban subsets:

south-east, medium and part of the north of the England, under the domination of London.
the Rhenish axis with the German Conurbation S of the Rhine-Ruhr, Rhine-Hand and the Randstad Holland

African continent

In South Africa, the fusion of the urban surfaces of Johannesburg, Pretoria and zone ranging between the smaller cities of Witwatersrand, Vereeniging and Sasolburg seems to have created the first African megalopolis with step less than 8 million inhabitants.

Imaginary megalopoles

The megalopolis is a topic running in the Science-fiction, generally making it possible to express an urban hellish vision thorough to its paroxysm. For example, William Gibson described, in “Neuromancien”, the Conurb extending from Boston with Atlanta. The kind also described cities having finally covered integrality with their planet, like Trantor, populated of 40 billion inhabitants, in the series Fondation of Isaac Asimov, or Coruscant in the Star Wars.

To note

One should not confuse a megalopolis, definite higher, and a Mégapole, agglomeration of more than 8 million inhabitants (threshold fixed by UNO). Thus, Moscow is a mégapole, but does not belong to any recognized megalopolis since no Urban network of importance developed in the vicinity even if it counts more than 14 million inhabitants.

Sources and bibliography

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