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The BosWash or Bosnywash or Boshington megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, extending from Boston, MA to Washington, D.C., including Providence, RI, Hartford, CT, New Haven, CT, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, and Baltimore, MD. The geographic trend was first identified in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottmann. The cities are also linked economically, and by transportation and communications. According to Gottmann, 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 envisioned the development of two similar megalopolises in the US: ChiPitts from Chicago to Pittsburgh, and SanSan from San Francisco to San Diego. However, a more accepted definition in California is Bajalta California, comprising just the southern end of SanSan.
Extent BosWash theoretically extends from extreme southern Maine and New Hampshire all the way south to Virginia, where recently, with the explosion of population in the Hampton Roads area, the megalopolis now includes the three largest cities in southeastern Virginia: Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Chesapeake. The megalopolis contains a reported population of 44 million, or 16 percent of the population of the United States (about 0.7 percent of the world population), three world cities, and four of the world's 50 largest metropolitan areas—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore-Washington, as well as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, the White House and United States 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 eight Ivy League schools. Amtrak's fastest train, the Acela Express, runs on the Northeast Corridor, an electrified rail line extending the length of the BosWash area. Interstate 95, arguably one of the most vital highways in the country, is also a major transportation route for the BosWash area. As large as Boswash is, internationally there are other larger megalopolises, such as Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka-Hiroshima-Fukuoka containing 75 million people (being itself part of the larger Taiheiyo Belt of almost 83 million people), the very reason for the success of the bullet train (Shinkansen). The Pearl River Delta in China could also be considered a developing megalopolis as it is home to several cities with more than a million people in a small area. The major cities in the BosWash megalopolis include the following (North-to-South): Several small and medium-sized metropolitan areas near the southwestern end of the corridor, including Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, York, Pennsylvania, Hagerstown, Maryland, and Frederick, Maryland, are also sometimes considered part of the region, though opinions vary from geographer to geographer as to which cities are included or excluded. Population statistics Included or neighboring MSAs not in a CSA See also | ||||||||
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