Northeastern megalopolis

Northeast megalopolis
Megaregion of the U.S.
Population density in the Northeast megalopolis along the Atlantic Seaboard
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.
States	Maine  New Hampshire  Massachusetts  Rhode Island  Connecticut  New York  New Jersey  Pennsylvania  Delaware  Maryland  Virginia
Federal Districts	Washington, D.C.
Largest city	New York (8,405,837)
Population (2010)	52,332,123
• Density	931.3/sq mi (359.6/km2)
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, Providence, Hartford, New York City, Philadelphia, Wilmington, 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.