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Will Indy, Cincy, Lex, LSVille, with Columbus and Dayton become a new Megalopolis?
All the cities I mention are with 2hrs driving time to Cincy. Cincy being the central hub.
Wiki has an article for a Great Lakes Megalopolis. But I dont think cities not along the lake front should be included. I think the aforementioned cities can be considered a separate Megalopolis. Plus the Cities that are on the lake front are very far from each other. They are all well over 3 hrs from each other driving time.
Only Chicago and Milwaukee are close. Chicagoland to Detroit or Toledo is around 5 hrs or more. Both Detroit and Cleveland to Toronto is around 4 hrs.
I just don't see people moving to this "fly over country" in mass to make them a megalopolis in the future . Certainly they are not that now.
Perhaps is housing is so very cheap that it is the incentive to move there.
Our economy is service based. So it just about where there is lot of people. All those cities are pretty close to each other.
Does that mean services for people already in the area? If so, that's not an economic base. At least not one that'll grow.
The base (and growth) needs to be money coming from the rest of country and world, which then filters through the local economy and supports those local services. That can be HQs, factories, migration, whatever.
Cincinnati and Dayton are just about there now. I drove south from Dayton to Cincinnati and there is barely any gap between Dayton's southern suburbs and Cincinnati's northern suburbs.
I got a good feeling driving through this area. It feels very new, is fairly well planned, and is a big area. The distance from northern Kentucky through Cincinnati to Dayton is about 60 miles. In comparison, Dallas to Fort Worth is 30 miles. With the right policies to attract business, this is an area you could see becoming the next DFW.
I wouldn't call it a megalopolis, but I would consider it a grouping (possibly subgrouping if you're as loose as the old megaregions groupings) to take into account. It's kinda like Oklahoma City-Tulsa-NWA; or Birmingham-Huntsville-Nashville.
In terms of things like HSR, these corridors would be important, especially in the ways they could help link megaregions. But they wouldn't necessarily expect to have that whole suburbs touching thing.
I don't think these cities have any particular connection to make them become a single megalopolis, but having said that I also don't consider them part of the Great Lakes megalopolis. Cincinnati and Louisville are like 5 hours from the nearest Great Lake and have totally different histories and demographic makeups from Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, etc. It's like calling Pittsburgh or Charleston, WV part of the Northeast Corridor.
With US population growth slowing to a trickle it would take a minor miracle (or disaster) for this to happen in the next 100 years. Maybe if Florida and Houston get under sea level due to global warming but otherwise its hard to see a scenario where this occurs
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