Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion

The Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion (PAM) is a neologism created by the Regional Plan Association for an area of the Southeastern United States that includes the Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, Birmingham, Greenville, Piedmont Triad, and Raleigh-Durham metropolitan areas. The megaregion generally follows the Interstate 85/20 corridor. According to Georgia Tech, PAM represents over 12 percent of the total United States population and covers over 243,000 square miles (630,000 km²) of land.

PAM is just one emergent megalopolis (also known as a megaregion) of eight such regions in the continental United States, so-called because half the nation's population growth and two-thirds of its economic growth is expected to occur within those regions over the next four decades.

Region

Studies by Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech identify The I-85 Corridor in the Southeastern United States area as an "emergent" megalopolis including the primary cities of Atlanta, Birmingham, Greenville, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, and Raleigh with Atlanta being the largest metropolitan area and Charlotte being the largest city. Both studies refer to the area as the Piedmont megalopolis.

The Georgia Tech survey defines the region narrowly, focusing on the urban and suburban counties between Birmingham and Raleigh, and the rural counties that explicitly link those urban and suburban counties.

The Virginia Tech study proposes a broader definition, which would also include Columbus, Macon, Huntsville, Augusta, Columbia, Knoxville, Chattanooga, the Tri-Cities, Asheville and a number of smaller cities. The western extent of this definition is deeply disconnected from the remainder of the region by the Appalachian Mountains range, and is economically not well-integrated into the greater region. Other locales mentioned in the Virginia Tech study remain disconnected from the region's core, separated by dozens of miles of deeply rural areas.

Both reports highlight the "emergent" nature of this possible megalopolis, noting comparatively low urban densities, but also noting a pattern in growth (in the individual, component urban areas) towards each other. As of 2005, this region (as defined in the Virginia Tech study) has a population of 19 million.

The Piedmont Atlantic central Metropolitan Areas are located on the southern Piedmont region which gives the Megaregion its name. The Piedmont is located between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coastal plain. The surface relief of the Piedmont is characterized by relatively low, rolling hills with heights above sea level between 200 feet (50 m) and 800 feet to (rarely) 1,000 feet (250 m to 300 m).

The region has a diverse economy ranging in many different industries. Henry W. Grady of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the term New South to describe the American South, in whole or in part. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South's plantation system of the antebellum period, to a new Industrial region. Since then Atlanta has grown from a small railway town into a major business, convention and transportation hub. Atlanta is now considered a "Alpha- World City" According to GaWC 2010 at Loughborough University by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network. Charlotte in the Piedmont Crescent has grown to become a major U.S. financial center, and the nation's 2nd largest financial center. Birmingham boom after the Civil War as a major industrial center in the Southern United States, the city's economy has diversified into banking, insurance, medicine, publishing, and biotechnology. The region of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill is known as the Research Triangle, named for the Research Triangle Park, which is the largest research park in the United States and one of its most prominent high-tech research and development centers. Upstate South Carolina, a region including Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson has been given foreign investment and has become the fastest growing region in the U.S. state of South Carolina.

Greensboro had a metro population of 741,065 in 2013.

Raleigh had a metro population of 1,214,516 in 2013 and is considered one of the fastest growing cities in the US.

Population

Primary Statistical Areas (PSAs) within the Piedmont Atlantic megalopolis^[1]

Rank	Primary Statistical Area	Anchor City	State(s)	Population (2014)
1	Atlanta–Athens-Clarke County–Sandy Springs	Atlanta	GA	6,258,875
2	Charlotte–Concord–Gastonia	Charlotte	NC / SC	2,537,990
3	Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill	Raleigh	NC	2,075,126
4	Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro	Nashville	TN	1,912,819
5	Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point	Greensboro	NC	1,630,368
6	Greenville–Spartanburg–Anderson	Greenville	SC	1,409,582
7	Memphis–Forrest City	Memphis	TN / MS / AR	1,370,129
8	Birmingham–Hoover–Talladega	Birmingham	AL	1,317,269
9	Knoxville–Morristown–Sevierville	Knoxville	TN	1,103,782
10	Chattanooga–Cleveland–Dalton	Chattanooga	TN / GA / AL	945,148
11	Columbia–Orangeburg–Newberry	Columbia	SC	928,368
12	Charleston-North Charleston	Charleston	SC	727,689
13	Huntsville–Decatur–Albertville	Huntsville	AL	688,806
14	Augusta-Richmond County-Martinez	Augusta	GA	603,658
15	Fayetteville–Lumberton–Laurinburg	Fayetteville	NC	548,275
16	Johnson City–Kingsport–Bristol	Kingsport	TN / VA	509,170
17	Columbus–Auburn–Opelika	Columbus	GA / AL	502,336
18	Asheville–Brevard	Asheville	NC	475,361
19	Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton	Hickory	NC	407,861
Total	25,204,897

Transportation

Interstate I-85 and I-20 are the main corridors, and the major Interstates that are intersected are : I-95, I-40, I-73, I-74, I-77, I-26, I-75, and I-65. The gateway cities of Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington all serve as seaports for the Piedmont Atlantic Region. Within the PAM there are six international airports, nine when including those located in the aforementioned gateway cities.

Megaregion as a unit

The Piedmont Atlantic is the fastest growing mega-region in the United States. The mega-region is facing challenges with its growing population, increased traffic congestion, and inadequate infrastructure. Mayors, businesses, and academic professionals have organized the Piedmont Alliance for Quality Growth to help address these problems with sustainable solutions. With the goal of focusing on the growth of the Megaregion, they have called for less competition between cities and metropolitan areas in the same region, and a stronger and more cohesive ability to work together to compete on the global scale. The major issues that the PAM has to solve include conflicts over shared natural resources such as water and problems transportation infrastructure such as road upkeep and the railways linking cities. Many of the issues cities or metropolitan areas face cannot be solved by action on a local scale. A Megaregion as a unit working together is an advantage in economics and quality of life within the region.

Culture

The culture of the PAM is a subset of the culture of the greater Southern United States. It is mainly a combination of the cultures of Georgia and North Carolina, as these two states have the greatest populations by far of the five states that make up the region, and contain most of the region's major cities.

Georgia Dome

Bank of America Stadium

National Professional Sports teams

Attractions

A 2008 aerial photo of Atlanta's urban core viewed from the Southwest near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Downtown Atlanta (in the foreground) is followed by Midtown, and then Buckhead. Sandy Springs and Dunwoody's Perimeter Center skyline is visible in the background. In 2013, the entire region had a population of 6,162,195.

Charlotte is the largest city in the region with a population of 792,862 as of 2013.

The geography of the region is diverse and lends itself to a variety of outdoor recreational activities, ranging from hiking along the Appalachian Trail in the mountains to relaxing on the coastal beaches.

Many of the cities within the region have extensively developed tourism infrastructure. Charlotte, the largest city in the region, hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Uptown Mint Museum, Carowinds Amusement Park, Discovery Place, Bank of America Headquarters, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Billy Graham Center, and many upscale shops and restaurants. Atlanta has a number of attractions centered around the Centennial Olympic Park, which was built as part of the infrastructure improvements for the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics. Nearby attractions in Atlanta include the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Road Atlanta, CNN Center, Georgia Aquarium (the world's largest indoor aquarium), and the new World of Coca-Cola. Other Atlanta area attractions include the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, Six Flags Over Georgia, and Stone Mountain Park.

Charlotte also has more than 25 million tourists a year, while Atlanta has 37 million.

Other cities in the mega-region also offer tourism opportunities. Birmingham, for example, is home to several museums; the largest is the Birmingham Museum of Art, which is also the largest municipal art museum in the Southeast. The area's history museums includes Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which houses a detailed and emotionally charged narrative exhibit putting Birmingham's history into the context of the Civil Rights Movement. The Birmingham area also includes two prominent race tracks : Talladega Superspeedway and Barber Motorsports Park. Greenville, S.C., offers Falls Park on the Reedy, a 32-acre (130,000 m2) park adjacent to downtown in the historic West End district.