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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.
Daytonnati lives!
Would this be called the Ohio River Valley Triangle? Or is it more a trapezoid with Lexington?
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.
I'm not sure how much I agree with you here. I think Louisville and Cinci are more connected to the Great Lakes cities than you are suggesting. Whether that translates to a regional megalopolis is a different discussion. Yes Cinci and Louisville as river cities are going to have some different history than the Great Lakes industrial cities. It's worth pointing out that the Great Lakes cities emerged as ports like Cinci and Louisville, before they became industrial giants. I don't think they are quite as divergent as you're saying.
Louisville in particular is harder to peg for me. It is almost an identical distance to the Alabama border, as it is to the Michigan border. Economically it shares more in common with Detroit, than it does Atlanta(It is also closer to Detroit than Atlanta). I would also say that the demographic make-up of Louisville's metro is not really that dissimilar from the Great Lakes cities either being primarily white, followed by black as the largest minority, and hispanic's making a distant 3rd.
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
Boston is like 150 years older than DC and one is a Northern Port city, the other is a Southern town built on Government
It's hard to be a "megalopolis" when there are still miles of farmlands between most of those city, other than maybe Cincy and Dayton. If anything there are probably more developments between Cincy and Dayton than Dayton and Springfield.
Putting Indy in the equation? The sprawl is not even reaching Shelbyville from Indy yet along I-74. Even Franklin Township section of Indy (SE Marion County) still has tons of farmland to be paved over for more cookie-cutter suburban housing.
Boston is like 150 years older than DC and one is a Northern Port city, the other is a Southern town built on Government
Geographies don't make megalopolis, but interconnectivity. There is a reason the Northeastern Megalopolis became the first and most studied example of it in the world. The hourly airline shuttles, the Acela, the Uhauls going up-and-down the coast, all of it forged a region that overrode geographic considerations.
Geographies don't make megalopolis, but interconnectivity. There is a reason the Northeastern Megalopolis became the first and most studied example of it in the world. The hourly airline shuttles, the Acela, the Uhauls going up-and-down the coast, all of it forged a region that overrode geographic considerations.
I guess my point is the cultural gap between Boston and DC was far bigger than between two different kinds of industrial towns founded like 18 years apart in the same state.
Geographies don't make megalopolis, but interconnectivity. There is a reason the Northeastern Megalopolis became the first and most studied example of it in the world. The hourly airline shuttles, the Acela, the Uhauls going up-and-down the coast, all of it forged a region that overrode geographic considerations.
There are just not a lot of rural area along I-95 in the entire BosWash corridor is what make it a megalopolis. There's a ~15mi gap between Perryville (part of Baltimore metro) and Elkton MD (edge of Wilmington DE metro) and a ~45mi gap between either New Haven area to New London area along CT coast or between Springfield MA and Worcester, but otherwise the whole corridor is developed.
There are really only 2 such heavily developed corridors in the entire world anyway - BosWash in USA and Taiheiyo Belt in Japan. There are smaller one like LA-San Diego (No...the "San-San" Megalopolis is total BS), Pearl River Delta or Beijing-Tianjin corridor (and maybe Shanghai-Changzhou corridor) in mainland PRC. The 2nd group you're talking about a ~100mi corridor, not ~450mi between Boston and DC or ~350mi between Tokyo and Himeji in western edge of the Keihanshin area (The Taiheiyo belt can arguably extend west of that). Then there are heavily populated regions like Nile Delta which is basically a bunch of farms next to a bunch of small village/towns that are only like few miles apart from each other, but are still distinct villages.
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
I thought about that too, but if the population stagnates (or declines), other regions will see the same thing. The real issue, imo, is how this region does in relative terms.
These areas are growing far too slowly to become a "megalopolis" and it would be a disaster for that region if they did.
Once US totally opens its border and let everyone and their mother "immigrate" to USA /s
Jokes aside short of crazy amount of immigration both externally and internally (i.e. Great Lakes flooding a large part of the region including Chicago making everyone moves further south) are about the only way that region forms a true megalopolis.
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/s
