The emerging great lakes magalopolis

Abstract

This century is seeing the emergence of a new type of human settlement--the megalopolis. Megalopolises, through they are still in the developing stage, seem to be characterized by their large size in area and population, including within them large urban centers and areas of high regioual densities which are beginning to strongly interact with each other. They have already reached sizes of over 100 000 square kilometers it area and 60 to 70 million in population. Megalopolises are expected to grow in number, size, and complexity. By the first half of the twenty-first century, the megalopolitan population may constitute almost half of the earth's population. It is not too early, if we would plan for the future, to begin to study what these emerging new settlements will be like. In this paper one such megalopolitan formation, taking place around the Great Lakes area of the United States, is identified and a preliminary definition of its boundaries is reached. Features of the Great Lakes megalopolis are compared with the East Coast megalopolis studied by Gottmann. Two major findings are: 1) a time lag of 30 years seems to prevail for certain variables, the Great Lakes megalopolis being younger than the eastern one; 2) in general, megalopolitan formations show higher growth rates during the earlier phases of their development and tend to grow more slowly as they approach the later development stages. On the basis of these findings tentative population projections are made for the year 2000. It is projected that the Great Lakes megalopolis will overtake and surpass the eastern megalopolis in many respects after the end of the century. Transportation aspects will play an important role in conditioning the structure and operation of the emerging megalopolises.