ChiPitts

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Approximate area covered in the ChiPitts megalopolis. Major cities are shown with a black dot.
Approximate area covered in the ChiPitts megalopolis. Major cities are shown with a black dot.

ChiPitts or the Great Lakes Megalopolis refers to a group of metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes region or Midwest of the United States (along with Western Pennsylvania and Western New York) extending from Pittsburgh to Chicago (the largest city in the megalopolis) and linked by economics, transport, and communications. The estimated population of this megalopolis is 54 million people.

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[edit] History of the concept

The term was coined in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottmann. Gottmann also envisaged the development of two similar megalopolises in the U.S.: BosWash, from Boston to Washington, D.C., and SanSan, from San Francisco to San Diego.

Herman Kahn in 1965 speculated about the future of the three megalopolises in the year 2000,[1] referring to their names as "half-frivolous" and not mentioning Gottman.

The Virginia Tech Metropolitan Institute's Beyond Megalopolis, an attempt to update Gottmann's work with current trends, defines a similar "Midwest" megapolitan area as one of ten such areas in the United States,[2] avoiding the neologism ChiPitts, which has never come into common use.[citation needed]

[edit] Comparisons and developments

Compared to other regions such as BosWash and Japan's Pacific Belt, ChiPitts is a looser collection of cities, spread over a large area with much suburban and rural space in between, rather than a continuous urbanized area. One review judges it to be "at best a borderline case" of a megalopolis.[3]

Since Gottmann's original publication, many constituent portions of the corridor have suffered job loss and in some cases diminished populations, in the wake of changes in the U.S. economy and the shift of manufacturing jobs to other portions of the country or overseas.

[edit] Related terms

The Pittsburgh-Chicago Corridor is an academic urban studies term that describes the area running through the Rust Belt from the Mid-Atlantic to the Western Great Lakes. ChiPitts also roughly has the same boundaries as the Rust Belt.

Steel City Corridor describes the area connecting Cleveland to Pittsburgh, via Youngstown-Warren, Ohio and Sharon-Farrell-New Castle, Pennsylvania. Historically, these areas are known as the Steel Valleys (Mahoning and Shenango, respectively).[citation needed]

[edit] U.S. Census statistics

Rank Combined Statistical Area State(s) 2006 Estimate 2000 Population 1990 Population Percent Change
(1990-2000)
3 Chicago-Aurora-Michigan City IL-IN-WI 9,661,840 9,312,255 8,385,397 +11.1
9 Detroit-Warren-Flint MI 5,428,000 5,357,538 5,095,695 +5.1
14 Cleveland-Akron-Elyria OH 2,931,774 2,945,831 2,859,644 +3.0
17 Pittsburgh-New Castle PA 2,478,883 2,525,730 2,564,535 -0.5
20 Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington OH-KY-IN 2,147,617 2,050,175 1,880,332 +9.0
22 Indianapolis-Anderson-Columbus IN 1,958,453 1,843,588 1,594,779 +15.6
24 Columbus–Marion–Chillicothe OH 1,936,351 1,835,189 1,613,711 +13.7
26 Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha WI 1,708,563 1,689,572 1,607,183 +5.1
43 Buffalo-Niagara NY 1,169,000 1,170,111 1,189,288 -1.6
Combined CSAs US 30,081,293 29,395,067 27,214,987 +8.0

The table above does not include:

[edit] List of cities

The major cities in the ChiPitts megalopolis include the following:

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=sxb2iYN20u4C&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=chipitts&source=web&ots=97uGYdoc2K&sig=7ztVxWfIG5EBxODs2dmNd9HLgfE&hl=en#PPA87,M1
  2. ^ http://www.mi.vt.edu/uploads/megacensusreport.pdf
  3. ^ http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717244.600-review-tales-of-cities-and-megalopolises-.html