Originally Posted by
paytonc
In any case, some of these regions strike me more as convenient geographic constructs than as genuine supra-metropolitan units that shape human activities. Chicago is about 400 miles from Pittsburgh, Omaha, and Kansas City; Chicago arguably has similar economic and social ties to the western cities as to Pittsburgh -- so why, besides the fact that Ohio is more populous than Iowa, draw the megapolitan boundary east from Chicago? (Maybe one useful and easily obtained measure might be intercity passenger and freight flows.)
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I don't get the ChiPitts (or is that Chia Pitts?
) one either. What connects Chicagoland to Detroitland (I just made that up) There's not much between the two areas except a huge lake and farms and rural areas, with an occasional small city in between. It isn't the same, or at least doesn't appear to be the same to me, as what exists in the Boston to Washington region. Am I misunderstanding what it is? (Yes, I learned about it in Elementary school in Michigan, years ago.)