BosWash

The BosWash megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, extending from Boston to Washington and linked by economics, transport and communications. It was first identified in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottman.

According to Gottman, BosWash "provides the whole of America with so many essential services, of the sort a community used to obtain in its 'downtown' section, that it may well deserve the nickname of 'Main Street of the nation'". He also envisaged the development of two similar megalopolises in the U.S., ChiPitts from Chicago to Pittsburgh and SanSan from San Francisco to San Diego.

BosWash contains a reported population of 44 million, 16% of the population of the United States, and four of the world's fifty largest metropolitan areas--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington--as well as the New York Stock Exchange, the White House and US Capitol, the UN Headquarters, the headquarters of ABC, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times Company as well as the Washington Post, and six of the Ivy League schools. The high-speed Amtrak train, the Acela, runs the BosWash route.

The major cities in the BosWash megalopolis include the following:

• Boston, Massachusetts
• Providence, Rhode Island
• Springfield, Massachusetts
• Hartford, Connecticut
• New York, New York
• Newark, New Jersey
• Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Atlantic City, New Jersey
• Wilmington, Delaware
• Baltimore, Maryland
• Washington, DC

External Links

• About.com article on BosWash: http://geography.about.com/cs/urbansprawl/a/megalopolis.htm