Could the East Coast Become One Giant Megalopolis?

The eastern U.S., especially states bordering the Atlantic coast, are some of the densest areas in the country. When comparing it to the western U.S., which is dominated by rural wilderness and mountains, the eastern U.S. has a totally different dynamic, with small towns usually every few miles. There are three major megalopolises, or megaregions, found in the eastern U.S. There's the Northeast Megalopolis, from around Washington, D.C. to Boston, the Southeast Megalopolis, from Raleigh to Atlanta, and the Florida Megalopolis, which covers this entire peninsula. These areas have grown a ton over the past century, and have now begun expanding towards each other. As areas in Virginia have suburbanized and areas like Raleigh have exploded in population, these megalopolises have been moving towards each other, and that begs the question, will these two or even three megalopolises ever connect and form one much larger super megalopolis? Today I wanted to research the growth of these areas, and the possibility of when and if they'll ever connect. Before the video starts though, make sure you do subscribe to the channel, I'm getting so close to 100,000 subscribers, my lifelong goal, so if you enjoy geography content like this, please consider simply clicking the button below, it's super easy for you and super helpful for me. Thank you! So what am I talking about? Well, let's start by going over the Southeast Megalopolis, then we can go over the Northeast, and you'll see what I mean. So in the Southeast, it starts in Atlanta, a metropolitan area that has a population of 6 million people. If you compare it to 1950, the city has a population growth of 1,187%, one of the fastest in the region. Moving up, next you have Greenville, South Carolina, a metro area of 900,000, then Spartanburg, which has 300,000. Those two cities are the connectors into Charlotte, North Carolina, another city that has grown by an incredible margin. Since 1950, it's grown by 1,448% to a current population of 2 million. That then connects into the Piedmont Triad, which includes the city of Winston-Salem, High Point, and Greensboro. The combined metropolitan area is now close to 1.7 million, and that then connects to Raleigh-Durham, which is at 1.5 million. Not only is it at 1.5 million, but it's grown by around 2,093% since 1950, which might come into play later. The Megalopolis ends up at a population of around 17.5 million, and it's growing at a very fast rate. Moving on to the Northeast Megalopolis, it really needs no introduction. It has a population upwards of 50 million, and was the reason the term was even created. The North end is at Boston, which easily connects to Providence, Hartford, or New Haven. Those in turn bring you to New York City, which is the central city of the entire region, connecting up into places like Albany and Long Island. Through New Jersey, it connects into Philadelphia, another large historic city. That connects through Delaware into Baltimore, which then connects into Washington, D.C. This is where things then get interesting, because as suburban growth has taken place in the southern area of the Megalopolis, it's begun to expand. I've always been slow to include Richmond in the Megalopolis, because there are rural areas between the cities, but there's continuous development between D.C. and Fredericksburg. Then along I-95, there is definitely development that basically gets you all the way to Richmond. So now let's say Richmond is considered part of the Northeast Megalopolis. This may be where you believe the Northeast Megalopolis ends, but continuing with the region's suburban growth, it moves a bit to the east into Providence Forge, and then you can absolutely argue there's development into Tohono, and then Williamsburg, and guess what guys, now we're in the Hampton Roads. So suddenly, just by looking at recent development, we've just expanded the Northeast Megalopolis 180 miles southward into North Carolina, and that then brings us to our current situation. Quickly, I want to mention that I'll talk about Florida just a little bit later, but it's farther away from connecting, and it's a different situation, so I'll leave it for now. Our real question comes from this 130 mile gap between Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Hampton Roads of Virginia, and slightly into North Carolina. That's not that large of a gap, and as we saw in the situation of the Northeast Megalopolis, suburban expansion can shrink these gaps. This is entirely possible, right? Well the first step is looking at the two main metropolises, and how much they've expanded towards each other. In Raleigh, the farthest you can go back in the satellite imagery is 1984, but that tells us a story. At that time, the urban influence only stretched to around Knightdale in the west, if even that. Present day, though, it's expanded out to around Zebulon, or farther. In the north, this is even more apparent, expanding from Falls all the way to Franklinton. Those differences of 10 and 13 miles average us out at around 11.5 miles of expansion since 1980. This can be backed up with statistics like that of Knightdale's population, which was Wake Forest had under 10,000 in 1980, and it now has 54,000. Now that the suburban expansion has gotten to Zebulon, we see the same thing starting in 2015, with the city's population nearly doubling in 10 years. Looking at the Hampton Roads expansion, I'll admit it's much less apparent, but you've seen influence expand by around 5 miles in the south part of the metro. In the west part of the metro, Suffolk is a very suburban county, and it's seen some massive growth since, guess when, 1980, nearly doubling in size. So with that, we've proven that the two main cities have expanded towards each other by anywhere from 15 to 20 miles. But that doesn't cut too much down of the 130 mile gap. The only real way we do that is if the entire area in between grows enough, but that brings us to a sad truth. Looking at North Carolina's population growth map by county tells us the exact opposite of what we'd want to see for the two metro areas to connect. The rural areas between these two cities aren't just not growing, they're declining. The city of Rocky Mount has stayed nearly completely stagnant since 1990, and even somewhere like Roanoke Rapids has lost over a thousand residents in that time period. The only real opportunity I see is if these large cities continue to expand their influence by another 20 to 30 miles in the next 50 years, which will then lead more rural towns and cities to be affected by their growth. We've seen it in the east of Raleigh, so maybe Raleigh will expand to Rocky Mount, and the dominoes will fall. But what we actually see here is a massive gap in population growth that I call the Mid-Atlantic Gap, due to its location between the two. Yep, this is a new term I made up, please everybody use it. The gap is single-handedly stopping these two megalopolises from merging, and I don't see this changing anytime soon, unless we see a big change. Now quickly, what about the gap between the southeast megalopolis and Florida? This gap is even larger, but both of these regions are growing quickly. You might think that the area that needs to be filled is from Atlanta to around Gainesville, but I'd say the best possible connection is from Greenville, South Carolina into Columbia into Charleston, which can then cut down the coast. There's a highway corridor here that goes through South Carolina, which is really helpful for our case, since those areas tend to suburbanize much faster. None of the communities between Greenville and Columbia area are expanding, but the counties are growing, and since I think Greenville may be one of the next places to explode in population in the US, I can see the suburban influence connecting these two cities within the next 50 years. Yet again though, we get stopped because there is an area of population decline and rurality between Columbia and Charleston that is very unhelpful. There's also a gap between Charleston and Savannah, but since both of those cities are growing fairly quickly, that's more likely. I think for these two megalopolises to expand in the next 50 to 70 years, it would most likely take massive growth along the coast that is already ravaged by hurricanes, so things don't look good. So that brings us to our conclusion. The mid-Atlantic gap, which I'm hoping catches on, disconnects the Northeast and Southeast megalopolises. This area will likely disconnect them long enough into the future that it's not worth looking forward to. Furthermore, the disconnect between Florida and the Southeast megalopolis is small, but it likely won't urbanize to the extent needed. This leaves us at a sad ending. But let's just enjoy the rural areas in the U.S. while they last. This may not be a permanent thing. Thanks for watching. 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