Talk:Megalopolis/archive

Green Banana?

First time ever I've heard about Green Banana. Does it even exist? Can the author give some sources?

Rome isn't part of the Blue Banana

The wiki article about the Blue Banana doesn't report Rome as part of it, while this article does. I think that Rome should not be included within the Blue Banana, because:

• Rome is separated by the nearest Blue Banana centre (Milan) by about 600 km.
• the area of the Apennines between Bologna (southern limit of the Po valley) and Rome is sparsely populated, with the single exception of the Florence urban area.
• The major traffic routes (both motorways and railways) of central-western Europe have their southern meeting point in Milan (Zagreb-Verona-Milan-Frejus-Lyon, Milan-Mont Blanc-Geneve, Milan-Simplon-Bern, Genoa-Milan-Gotthard-Rhine valley), while Rome is linked to the Blue Banana via the italian motorway A1 and the Milan-Bologna-Florence-Rome railway alone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.20.42.137 (talk) 16:16, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistent data within the Blue Banana

The paragraph about the european megalopolis (aka Blue Banana, stretching from Manchester to Milan) features pretty inconsistent data about the number of inhabitants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.96.203.197 (talk) 12:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

---

Disagree -- Do not replace megacity with megalopolis; they are not interchangeable. The term "megacity" is distinct from "megalopolis" in that the etymology of "city" and "polis" differ. A "polis" confuses a city and the state within which it is located. Indeed, the concept of polis rings classical with both political and geographical meaning. The term "city" offers no such confusion. It is a single, politically governed collection of inhabitants.

--agree--Afa86 20:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on the page; it needs work and clarification. The term "megalopolis" has a strict definition, which would apply to three geographic areas. Here the term is being applied to some other US urban areas not included in that original use of the term, and there are others not mentioned here that would also merit mention, at least at the same level.

I would suggest keeping this article limited to the strict original definition of "megalopolis," and shifting any others to "megacity;" and any emergent or developing areas (like the Texas areas mentioned, the Florida coasts or the Atlanta-Raleigh stretch of the Southeast US) be included in an "emergent megacity" sub-heading in the "megacity" article.~~David Alston~~

I would also like to see "Megalopolis" kept separate from "Megacity". Megalopolis strictly defines the area on the US Eastern Seaboard, while Megacity can be used for any large, urbanized area. -Ed Callens

Agree as above, the terms are no interchangeable. Bjrobinson 21:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I think that the Ruhr-area (Germany), the Randstad (the Netherlands, incl. the Brabantse stedenrij and the Knooppunt Arnhem-Nijmegen agglomerations), the Flemish Diamond (Belgium), Ile de France (France), the London-area (England, UK), as wel as several 'smaller' agglomerations like the Meuse-Rhine Euregion (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium), and the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Euregion (France, Belgium), should also be included in this list. This conurbation of agglomerations has a total of between the 50 and 60 million (at least), and is comparable with the US-BosWash, and can be considered the EU-BosWash. Is it an option to include this 'megalopolis' in this list? Rob--84.104.123.100 12:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Is Megalopolis actually an academic term that governments use? There are not many citations in the article that suggest this. I kind of get the feeling that any 3 or 4 mediocre cities within 100 miles of each can band together and boost there own egos by calling themselve a 'megalopolis'. Not all of the cities cited as examples fit into the following description: "an extensive metropolitan area or a long chain of continuous metropolitan areas." Many have rural districts or even wilderness in between tham. I realise a megalopolis is not the same thing as a conurbation, and the criteria seems to be any cities with strong economic/transport links. The problem with this criteria is that it makes most of Europe, East Asia, N.America a 'Megalopolis'. It may be that I have a problem with the term, rather than the actual article, but as the term is not adequately described (there is just a long list of examples) I cannot be sure. Shane1. 16 Feb 2007

At least in Mexico, the metropolitan environmental commission for Mexico City (PROAIRE) picked up the term (and its synonym "regional ring of cities") and used it in a couple of publications. However, neither the National Institute of Statistics nor the Population Council have used it in their reports. --theDúnadan 16:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

No opinion about the terms. But the statement about three areas of China is very inaccurate. It lists Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan in "Well developed megalopoleis", and describes the Pearl River Delta (PRD) as "considered a megalopolis," and Yangtze River Delta as "also be considered a megalopolis, thoug far less developed compared to the Pearl River Delta." The Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area is far far less devloped than both Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta (out of question, Beijing area is out of the question). When comparing Pearl vs. Yangtze, those two areas at most can be said about equal. Just check out the links for cities under each area and do your math about their areas, populations, GDPs etc. Apparently, Hong Hong is by far the most developed city of whole China; but even that there is argument about who is the most important economy powerhouse right now in China (Hong Kong vs. Shanghai). Also, don't forget living cost or purchasing power even within mainland China. I don't go any further about anything on single city of those areas. But I'm kind of wondering who wrote this part. I guess it could be a Westerner or marginal Chinese (such as ABC etc.). No dicrimination or anything like that. But as I had lived in China for several decades and have been in the States for almost a decade, I feel it kind of puzzling me that many Americans have pretty much misunderstanding about what's the fact, what's the fiction about China, even for very basic things. And that includes those who travelled to China or make Chinese as their friends. For example, if asking Americans name two most famous/familiar/important things about China, many would say Beijing and the Great Wall. Yes, Beijing for sure as it's the capital, but Great Wall? Come on, China has too many things more important than that. I'm not going to blame anyone/country/..., but there are pretty much mistandings/bias like that. As an average Joe who works for a living, that's fine. But in case you are investing, doing business, ...even remotely connected with China, that could be very very dangerous for such misjudgement, one day.

---Developed does not mean that the city itself is MODERN. It means that the land in between cities has become a citylike in itself, as opposed to rural in nature.

ChiPitts

Why is the ChiPitts megalopolis quoted at 54 million people, when its own link shows it at a little over 30 million people (38 million including Toronto-Windsor)? Most of the other sources that I've seen for various demographic agencies also have it in the 30-35 million people range. Billzav. 25 Apr 2007

Megalopolis as a common noun has gained some traction beyond the original BosWash (BosWash/ChiPitts/SanSan) idea. Probably because it sounds more impressive than conurbation. Saying the Megalopolis is from New York to Washington has a parochial ring to it, which is probably why other editors made those edits. I'm not even sure if Gottman included ChiPitts and SanSan or whether those crept in later.

Perhaps the article should be incorporated with conurbation or megacity as one (or three) example(s). I can't say that there's a problem with the reverse (there is no metrocity to contrast with metropolis), except for the possibility of an edit war.

The notion of continuity, however, seems a bit off. There are few real-world examples that are truly continuous, and those that are may not quite conform to the statistics (not to mention popular notions) associated with them.

.s

X ile 08:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC) - Talk

Emergent or Potential Megalopolis

Why is Canberra tacked on to the speculation of a Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong megalopolis in this section? You have to drive through over 3-4 hours of bush from the very outskirts of Sydney to even get to Canberra. hirokazu (talk) 09:31, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

This article is ridiculous

It is full of nothing but rank speculation as to what does and doesn't constitute a megalopolis, with almost no substantial sources. The concept that a belt of socio-economic interest exists between Chicago and Pittsburgh is true. However, it is not by any stretch of the definition a megalapolis - there are vast tracts of farmland and wilderness in between! And REALLY, claiming that everything between Manchester UK, Paris, and Hamburg is one gigantic megalopolis is patently absurd. Using these criteria you can claim that any stretch of land between any two or three cities, no matter how distant, is a megalopolis. -67.85.183.103 06:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that the article is ridiculous, but it clearly needs some work. You're IP suggests the Northeastern United States, as does your opinion. Samuel van Valkenburg and Colbert Held have applied Von Thunen's model to Europe and that patent absurdity, as you say, is utterly conventional in urban geography. See Fig. 1-6 here [1]. Appropriate sources defining the area as a megalopolis are likely to be far fewer than those defining it as the more generic conurbation or (what appears to be the emerging WP concensus) megacity.

As for ChiPitts, there are, of course, tracts of farmland and wilderness that break up strict continuity, which is why I have tweaked the definition in the intro. There are significant discontinuities because of physical and social considerations. That being said, The region's population density far exceeds what is readily observable on the vast majority of the Earth's land area. Relative to coastal east Asia and the Huang He and Chang Jiang valleys, ChiPitts may as well be Amazonia, but megalopolis, conurbation, and megacity need to be considered from a global perspective in a WP article.

It is more a matter of the relative size or "metropolitan-ness", if you will, of a city (or similar division) than just any "two or three cities" and how they function as a unit that would constitute a megalopolitan model. There are incorporated cities in the United States, and clearly within the Northeastern Megalopolis, that have only a few thousand people, so it is not any two or three cities that could be claimed to be a megalopolis--even if they were adjacent to each other and functionally inseparable. Consider a cluster of five incorporated U.S. cities with 6-7,000 people and their respective outskirts. That could not even meet the U.S. Census definition of a Metropolitan Statistical Area, much less be considered a megalopolis under the article's prior or current definition.

Having looked at some of the other links at the bottom of the article, this and the list of megalopolies are in a pretty sad state in terms of appearance, linking, and consistency. Those and the others need some fact-checking (badly). I've spent enough time on this dispatch, which could have been better spent. I will be getting back to these articles, hopefully before the end of the month (due to connection and hardware problems). Unfortunately, I'll probably have to flag for U.S.-centrism, because I don't know much about non-U.S. urban geography.

I have also removed references in the intro to some cities that are clustered together, but not particularly relevant (undue weight) to the idea of a "chain" of metropolitan areas. (See http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/metro_general/List6.txt for current U.S. Census/Office of Management and Budget scheme.) There does seem to be a bit of POV creep relating to ChiPitts, but correcting it would require too much work for me right now.

Any help or comments on the above will be appreciated.

.s

X ile 07:47, 12 May 2007 (UTC) - Talk

I live in the middle of the "Blue Banana" and I agree that applying any term that is in any way related to the concept of the city to it is patent absurdity with knobs on. Some people can't resist over-extending concepts in this field to a quite comical extent. 82.18.125.219 15:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

From where exactly did the writer of this article come up with Mumbai and Pune being a megapolis? That is beyond absurd, there is a friggin mountain range between the two cities. They are both very distinct and are in no way like a megapolis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.238.168.97 (talk) 11:41, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to make an attempt at making this article credible. Parts of it sound like something from a chamber of commerce brochure. I've seperated the "extension" and "emergent" sections, and have tagged everything that I don't have some kind of reference for. Sections for "other" and "emergent" megacities or megaregions (or megalopolis') ARE valuable and necessary IMO, but a long article filled with hyphenated lists is both unrelaible and unreadable, so I'd like to clean as much of that up as possible. Apart from the initial definition of the concept, the Georgia Tech study offers a very solid look at about a half-dozen other US and Canada regions; I'll see what I can find regarding the rest of the world. Each of the lists or sections should be of reasonable length.Davidals (talk) 04:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Must agree that this "Megalopolis" idea seems be far fetched in many cases. Its a step up from the more recognised conurbation which itself can be tricky to define. I'm going to check out the definition of megalopolis again and see if this supposed English one fits the criteria. Cls14 (talk) 14:58, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, read the article. It is indeed ridiculous. It's so vague it could mean anything. Cls14 (talk) 15:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Australia?

there is no way they some of those can even be class as megacities, much less Megalopolis... less than a million people isn't exactly a city, grouping towns together is not the meaning of Megalopolis... 218.186.13.3 (talk) 19:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. As an Australian familiar with all of those locations, there are clear separations of geographic, economic and cultural significance between Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. While Perth, Rockingham and Mandurah and indeed linked, that's pretty much a single metropolitan area rather than a "megalopolis", with a city centre in Perth and nearby industrial and commercial suburbs upon which the entire area depends (Mandurah for example is a city of 60,000 but has none of the infrastructure you'd expect for a city of that size), whilst South East Queensland, probably the only one which actually qualifies, had so many errors that I couldn't untangle it. In the end I simply removed this section entirely. Also removed Ostrava (my ancestral city) from the Krakow connurbation - seriously, anyone who's travelled by train or road between the two, as I have done, would understand they are not even remotely related. Orderinchaos 04:07, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I removed Melbourne (-Geelong-Bendigo-Ballarat) from the list; it's ridiculous to claim that as a cluster of linked cities. There are at least 50 clear km of bush or farmland between Melbourne and either of the latter two, and it's hard to argue that they're closely linked in any other way. And two cities (Melbourne-Geelong) hardly counts as a "cluster". I think one can argue that the Sydney Region is closely connected; there are significant commuter populations travelling between all the listed areas, and they're all linked by City Rail. It really depends on which of the conflicting definitions of 'megalopolis' one uses; if it requires 10M people then obviously no Australian urban area would qualify. miracleworker5263 (talk) 11:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Reno

How the heck does Reno qualify as part of the Bay Area? Seriously? There's a pretty chunk of space between them and us. I know- I live near Reno, and we go over to the Bay Area to visit relatives every summer. 71.142.139.114 (talk) 20:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Original Research

Numerous topics listed were not supported with any relevant sources defining them with a "megalopolis" term. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 14:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Not Megalopolis'

Many of the regions listed are NOT megalopolis'. Many are just metropolitan areas. I have tried to clean up the article, but I am going to stop. It may be beyond repair. Half the area's should be deleted. I think many editors don't realize what a megalopolis is. UrbanNerd (talk) 19:21, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Europe / UK

Just a brief note, but the area listed as Greater London is in fact the entirety of England. And despite these cities being well linked by train there are vast swathes of farmland and woodland between each, and quite large cultural differences (even language - a Londoner would struggle to understand someone from Newcastle). A better example would be say, Manchester and Liverpool. Unfortunately Greater London mostly straddles the surrounding counties but no notable 'Greater' cities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.145.204 (talk) 09:21, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

JAMI

I had a sociology teacher say the megalopolis along eastern Florida was called "JAMI" (from the JA in "Jacksonville" and the MI in "Miami"). Has anyone else heard this? I found one place on Google that the link no longer works on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.20.119.250 (talk) 12:51, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Chongqing

I don't think that there is reason to include the city, more accurately "municipality", on its own and in the first listing of Chinese megalopolises. The true metropolitan area of Chongqing is referred to in Chinese as "重庆主城区", and includes only a very small (on comparative terms) chunk. What's more, the vast majority of the city's administrative area is rural. Hence I am removing it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 21:46, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

ok sure I wasn't too sure about that one anyways. --Steve chiu (talk) 13:59, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Recife?

Wasn't Recife on here recently? Why was it removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.138.81 (talk) 14:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Montevideo

How can the purported Montevideo megalopolis in Uruguay contain 93 million people when the entire country has only 3.5 million? To the best of my knowledge, Montevideo is a modestly important metropolitan area, not part of any megalopolis. At 250 km from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I suppose an argument could be made that it is part of the BA megalopolis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.239.85 (talk) 18:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I have reverted an IP two times on the matter. I agree that Montevideo is not at the center of any megalopolis containing upwards of even three million people. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 00:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Montevideo had a population of ONLY 1,325,968 persons, as against Uruguay's population of 3,241,003. --Suomi 1973 (talk) 20:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

São Paulo megalopolis

Rio de Janeiro is defitely not part of it. Although both exercises great influence leading Brazil in many aspects of culture and finance (standard Brazilian Portuguese mixes the dialects of both regions), are well connected and related with each other, have global city status, etc. Rio's metropolis and São Paulo megalopolis are separated by a great rural area. Lusophone Wikipedia confirms it http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalópole_Rio-São_Paulo Lguipontes (talk) 14:25, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

• It is a common idea the future São Paulo - Rio megalopolis. Even now we can find a chain of smaller urban centers in the space dividing both metropolises. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 16:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
  • It's true, nevertheless there's no megalopolis including both metropolitan areas right now. I think that is better to say "in process of formation" but as something still separate in this article. Lguipontes (talk) 15:59, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
    • That could be an adequate compromise. Though it can be noted that few megapolopolis' are all continuous. Southern California includes Las Vegas and the Great Lakes urban centers are separated in areas as well. I believe the Rio article mentions the two as one. That may or may not need to be changed. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 19:16, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Other link from Lusophone Wikipedia indicates a separated "São Paulo metroplex". http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexo_Metropolitano_Estendido Since I added a "Rio metroplex" in this article, let's considerate São Paulo metroplex alone from Rio (that goes in southeast-northwest direction from Santos to Campinas and have an expansion in the direction of Vale do Paraíba and Rio, but far, far away of completing a continuous urban area), or Rio-São Paulo megalopolis? Someone readded Volta Redonda and Rio de Janeiro to Greater São Paulo when a Rio metroplex is too present. I'm not certain since there's no consensus about it in Brazil. Lguipontes (talk) 21:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge/rewrite

The articles Megaregion and Megalopolis are, by their own admission, referring to the same topics and need to be merged. Apart from that, as noted above, there needs to be a rewrite of this article for coherence and in order to stick to the topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.88.165.35 (talk) 16:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Oppose : the article megaregion is specific to the united states. Hourse1 (talk) 21:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose Too much information to be squeezed into one article, Keep as is. – Phoenix B 1of3 (talk) 18:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose- The article megaregion is specific to the United States and should be kept.Thomas Paine1776 (talk) 17:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)