The term "megalopolis" does not mean Boston-Washington. It is a geographical term that describes a large connected areas consisting of multiple metropolitans. It cannot be used as a standalone term out of context, as it can mean the whole Southern California, it can mean SW Indiana through Chicagoland up to the Milwaukee area, it can mean many other places in the world.

There are a few megalopolis' in this country - and they have names...

BosWash - The Boston / Washington corridor

SanSan - The San Francisco / San Diego corridor

ChiPitts - The Chicago / Pittsburgh corridor

Not to mention RIC, ABE, MDT, ACY, SFW, HPN, ISP, AVP, ALB, BDL, HVN, PVD, MHT, PWM, etc.... aside from airspace congestion, think about this: if you consider all the flights in North America, how many of them are to/from these airports? I'd be willing to bet it's 20-30 percent, at a minimum. If several airports get delayed, imagine the ripple effect as those a/c are then not available to run other, non-Northeast megalopolis flights that day.

In ATC terms, there's NOTHING worse than a blizzard or a line of thunderstorms parked over the DCA-BOS corridor, save a 9/11-like event.

I've heard this before, but I am a student of urban history It is a collection of large urban areas that adjoin each other. The best overall definition I've seen, along with some history on it, is here.

[ChiPitts - The Chicago / Pittsburgh corridor[/QUOTE]

ChiPitts?? LOL at that one. The only thing that ties that group together these days (if ever) is rabid NFL fans.

okay, for the record: I KNOW what a megalopolis is, I'd just never heard our area referred to it as such in any official communique.

I believe the Dallas, Houston, San Antonio triangle will soon be considered a Megalopolis. Last I read, about 85% of Texans live within the boundaries of I-35 in the west, I-45 in the east, and I-10 to the south.

I am not sure I'll put Houston into it. If you drive on I-10 or I-45 out of Houston, you see a lot more rural areas for pretty good distance.

On the other hand, the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to Dallas is one town after another, with only short gaps in between them now.

I'll have to find the article. I-10 between Houston and San Antonio looks empty but there is actually a lot there.

I think the point of the article is that most people in Texas live in these three major areas or on the roads between them.

Actually, it was a Frenchman, Jean Gottmann, whose book "Megalopolis" was published in 1961. He originally was referring, of course, to the Eastern Seaboard, but continued metropolitan growth has led to dozens of similar situations worldwide. Gottmann said as much in "Megalopolis Revisited" in 1987.

Personally, I've never liked the extra syllable in there; for that matter, maybe neither did Gottman, since he used "megapolitan" instead of "megalopolitan" as the adjective form.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy offers a better definition, perhaps, than Wikipedia's:
http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/PubD...spx?pubid=1039

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.)

Also, note the distinction between "megalopolis" (and its synonyms, like "conurbation," referring to multicentered regions) and "megacity" (a single metro area with over 10M residents).

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.)

Talking about a megalopolis, "Houston" is a giant sprawl of city and 'burbs that stretches from Sealy in the west to Beaumont in the east (about the same as distance New York, NY to Wilmington, DE); from Galveston in the south to Huntsville in the north (about the same distance as Boston, MA to New Haven, CT).

More accurately, Houston is a Mega-flat-hot-olis, since the entire region has the elevation of a pancake and is steamier than a sauna.