Northeast Megalopolis
| Northeast Megalopolis | |
|---|---|
| Megaregion of the U.S. | |
Population density in the Northeast Megalopolis along the Atlantic Seaboard.
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| Nickname(s): Northeast Corridor, BosWash, Boston-Washington Corridor, Eastern Seaboard, Atlantic Seaboard | |
 Major cities of the Northeast Megalopolis counterclockwise from top: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.. |
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| States |
 Maine New Hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland Virginia
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| Federal Districts |
 Washington, D.C.
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| Largest city |
 New York (8,405,837) |
| Population (2010) | 52,332,123 |
| • Density | 359.6/km2 (931.3/sq mi) |
| Demonym(s) | Northeasterner |
The Northeast megalopolis (also Boston–Washington Corridor or Bos-Wash Corridor) is the most heavily urbanized region of the United States, running primarily northeast to southwest from the northern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, to the southern suburbs of Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia. It includes the major cities of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., along with their metropolitan areas and suburbs as well as many smaller urban centers.
On a map, the Northeast megalopolis appears almost as a straight line. As of the year 2000, the region contained 49.6 million people, about 17% of the U.S. population on less than 2% of the nation's land area, with a population density of 931.3 people per square mile (359.6 people/km2), compared to the U.S. average of 80.5 per square mile 2 (31 people/km2). America 2050 projections expect the area to grow to 58.1 million people by 2025.
French geographer Jean Gottmann popularized the term in his landmark 1961 study of the region, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. Gottmann concluded that the region's cities, while discrete and independent, are uniquely tied to each other through the intermeshing of their suburban zones, taking on some characteristics of a single, massive city: a megalopolis.
The megalopolis encompasses the District of Columbia and part or all of 11 states: from south to north, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. It is linked by Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 1, which start in Miami and Key West, Florida, respectively, and terminate in Maine at the Canada–United States border, as well as the Northeast Corridor railway line, the busiest passenger rail line in the country. It is home to over 50 million people, and Metropolitan Statistical Areas are contiguous from Washington to Boston. The region is not uniformly populated between the terminal cities, and there are regions nominally within the corridor yet located away from the main transit lines that have been bypassed by urbanization, such as Connecticut's Quiet Corner.
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