BosWash

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The BosWash or Bosnywash or Boshington megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, extending from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., including New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The geographic trend was first identified in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottmann. The cities are also linked economically, and by transportion and communications.

According to Gottman, BosWash "provides the whole of America with so many essential services, of the sort a community used to obtain in its 'downtown' section, that it may well deserve the nickname of Main Street of the nation." He also envisaged the development of two similar megalopolises in the US: ChiPitts from Chicago to Pittsburgh and SanSan from San Francisco to San Diego.

BosWash theoretically extends from extreme southern Maine and New Hampshire all the way south to Virginia, where recently, with the explosion of population in the Hampton Roads area, the megalopolis now includes the three largest cities in Virginia: Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Chesapeake. The megalopolis contains a reported population of 44 million, or 16% of the population of the United States (.7% of the world population), probably two or more world cities, and four of the world's fifty largest metropolitan areas — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore-Washington — as well as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, the White House and US Capitol, the UN Headquarters, the headquarters of ABC, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times Company as well as the Washington Post, and six of the eight Ivy League schools. The high-speed Amtrak train, the Acela Express, runs on the Northeast Corridor, an electrified rail line extending the length of the BosWash area. Interstate 95, arguably one of the most vital highways in the country, is also a major transportation route for the BosWash area.

Image:Boswash.png

The major cities in the BosWash megalopolis include the following (North-to-South):

Manchester, New Hampshire Boston, Massachusetts Providence, Rhode Island Worcester, Massachusetts Springfield, Massachusetts Hartford, Connecticut New Haven, Connecticut Bridgeport, Connecticut Stamford, Connecticut Yonkers, New York New York, New York Jersey City, New Jersey Newark, New Jersey Paterson, New Jersey Allentown, Pennsylvania Princeton, New Jersey Reading, Pennsylvania Trenton, New Jersey Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Atlantic City, New Jersey Wilmington, Delaware Baltimore, Maryland Columbia, Maryland Annapolis, Maryland Washington, District of Columbia Arlington, Virginia Alexandria, Virginia Richmond, Virginia Norfolk, Virginia Virginia Beach, Virginia Chesapeake, Virginia

See also

• List of U.S. multistate regions
• Overpopulation
• The Sprawl, a science fiction extension of BosWash which extends from Boston to Atlanta from the books of William Gibson
• Mega-City One, another science fiction megalopolis based on BosWash from the Judge Dredd series

External links

• About.com article on BosWashde:Boswash

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