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The Blues Brothers 'Sweet home, Chicago'

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The Blues Brothers 'Sweet home, Chicago'

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Come on
Oh baby don't you wanna go
Come on
Oh baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago

Come on
Baby don't you wanna go
Hidehey
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Oh sweet home Chicago

Well, one and one is two
Six and two is eight
Come on baby don't ya
make me late
Hidehey
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago

Come on
Baby don't you wanna go
Back to that same old place
Sweet home Chicago

Six and three is nine
Nine and nine is eighteen
Look there brother baby and
see what I've seen
Hidehey...

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The Blues Brothers - Sweet Home Chicago (Official Audio)

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The SanSan megalopolis is a name for a hypothetical chain of metropolitan areas in western California along the coast extending from San Francisco to San Diego. It would contain most of the population of California, with about two-thirds of the total population in the Greater Los Angeles area.

The name was coined, along with the equally obscure ChiPitts, in the 1961 book "Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States" by French geographer Jean Gottmann. While SanSan has not come into use-in part because there is not enough need to distinguish SanSan from California as a whole to spur the adoption of a new term-Gottmann's coinage of BosWash (the first and largest of the megalopolises) "has" gained some currency.

The Tehachapi Mountains are a natural boundary between Southern California and relatively sparsely populated Central California. The large rural areas between the two main poles of SanSan weaken the argument that they constitute one megalopolis.

Much recent urbanization in California has been not on the coast itself or even the first tier of coastal valleys, but closer to the midline of the state in the Central Valley, Antelope Valley, and Inland Empire, still within (long) commuting distance of the coastal cities.

[http://www.mi.vt.edu/uploads/megacensusreport.pdf Beyond Megalopolis] by Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, an attempt to update Gottmann's work with current trends, defines two megapolitan areas, each extending from California into Nevada, named NorCal and Southland after terms current in those areas, out of a total of ten such areas in the United States.
Metropolitan areas in SanSan Important cities in SanSan ee also External links
* [http://geography.about.com/cs/urbansprawl/a/megalopolis.htm Megalopolis at about.com] - Makes a passing reference to SanSan

Look at other dictionaries:

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The SanSan megalopolis is a name for a hypothetical chain of metropolitan areas in western California along the coast extending from San Francisco to San Diego. It would contain most of the population of California, with about two thirds of the...

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The Great Lakes Megalopolis consists of the group of metropolitan areas in North America largely in the Great Lakes region and along the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It extends from the Midwestern United States in the south and west to western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York in the east and northward through Southern Ontario into southwestern Quebec in Canada. It is the most populated and largest megalopolis in North America.

At its most inclusive, in the United States the region cuts a wide swath from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to Rochester, New York, while on the Canadian side, it extends northeast to Quebec City. To the south, the region is considered to extend to urban areas in the Ohio River valley. Within the broad region, there is a core area that includes Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, South Bend, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, and Windsor to Toronto. The total region, extending from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Chicago to Quebec City had an estimated population of 59,144,461 as of 2011, making it the most populous megalopolis on the continent. It is projected to reach a population of approximately 65 million by 2025.

The region was partially outlined as an emergent megalopolis in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottmann. Gottmann envisaged the development of other megalopolises in the U.S.: from Boston to Washington, D.C., from Chicago to Pittsburgh, and from San Francisco to San Diego. In 1965, futurist Herman Kahn speculated about the future of the three megalopolises in the year 2000. In the 1960s and 1970s, urban planner and architect Constantinos Doxiadis authored books, studies, and reports regarding the growth potential of the Great Lakes Megalopolis. Doxiadis envisioned Detroit (on the US-Canada border across from Windsor) as the central urban area in the Great Lakes Megalopolis. According to him, the megalopolis extended "from Milwaukee and Chicago to Detroit, Pittsburgh and Buffalo and into Canada from Windsor to Montreal and Quebec".

In 2005, the Virginia Tech Metropolitan Institute's Beyond Megalopolis, an attempt to update Gottmann's work, outlined a similar "Midwest" megapolitan area as one of ten such areas in the United States (Canada is discussed tangentially). Over 200 million tons of cargo are shipped annually through the Great Lakes. The America 2050 project identified eleven Megaregions of the United States, including the Great Lakes Megalopolis. The Canadian part of the region is also referred to as the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, and the densest part in Southern Ontario has long been known as the Golden Horseshoe.

There are multiple government jurisdictions throughout the megalopolis. In addition to the federal governments of the United States and Canada, there are multiple U.S. state and two Canadian province jurisdictions, and there are many county and local governments. Most of the states have joined the provinces in forming the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers to coordinate economic and environmental strategies throughout most of the region.

According to the Brookings Institution, if it stood alone as a country, the economy of the Great Lakes region which includes most of the Great Lakes Megalopolis, would be one of the largest economic units in the world (with a $4.5-trillion gross regional product), roughly equal to that of Japan. The five Great Lakes contain one-fifth of the world's surface fresh water and have a combined shoreline of 10,210 miles (17,017 km). About 200 million tons of cargo are shipped by way of the Great Lakes each year.

Tourism is an important economic factor in and around the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Cruising Coalition supports passenger ship cruises through a joint U.S-Canadian venture to Great Lakes Ports and the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

The Chicago metropolitan area, also called Chicagoland is the largest metro economy in the Great Lakes Megalopolis. Chicago has one of the largest global urban area economies.

The Great Lakes Megalopolis is home to several of the most prestigious universities in the United States, including the University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Notre Dame. The region also contains large public universities such as The Ohio State University, Indiana University, Purdue University, and Michigan State University.

The Great Lakes Megalopolis includes the following major inter-urban corridors that are provided with freeway and passenger rail service in both the core and fringe areas of the mega-region. Major waterways for shipping and cruising are also indicated where applicable. Amtrak in the United States and Via Rail in Canada offer rail passenger service, while most Class I freight rail services also connect these points. A major rail shipping service in both Canada and the United States is provided on tracks owned by Canadian National Railway Company.

Chicago-Minneapolis/St. Paul

This corridor occupies the northwestern fringe of the megalopolis. It occupies northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and parts of eastern Minnesota. Interstate Highway 94 ( I-94) and Amtrak rail run roughly parallel from Chicago, IL to Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN by way of Milwaukee, WI and Madison, WI.

I-55, Amtrak, and the Illinois Waterway connect Chicago, IL to St. Louis, MO.

I-65 extends from the Chicago area southeast to Indianapolis IN, where I-74 travels through to Cincinnati, OH. Amtrak runs regular service along this same route.

I-90 and Amtrak run approximately parallel through the core area of the megalopolis from Chicago to Cleveland, OH via South Bend, IN and Toledo, OH, then into the eastern fringe area comprising Buffalo and Rochester, NY. Amtrak also has a passenger rail link from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, PA which is roughly paralleled by I-76. The main water route deviates well to the north of the land route from Chicago to Detroit. It runs north along Lake Michigan, east through the Straits of Mackinac, then south along Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, and Lake St Clair to the Detroit River. From this point, the water route roughly parallels the land route to Rochester by way of Lake Erie, the Welland Canal, and Lake Ontario.

I-94 takes a more northerly route than I-90 through the megalopolis core area east of Chicago. It extends from that city to the west end of the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor by way of Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Port Huron MI/ Sarnia ON. This interstate freeway is also paralleled by Amtrak rail service. The main water route is the same as for the western part of the Chicago-Rochester water corridor from Lake Michigan to the Detroit River.

The core area of the Great Lakes megalopolis extends as far northeast as Toronto in Ontario, Canada. The remainder of the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor northeast of Toronto lies along the northeastern fringe of the megaregion. The entire Canadian section of the broader megaregion is sometimes considered a separate megalopolis. Key freeways include Highway 401 and Highway 417 in Ontario which connect with Autoroute 20 and Autoroute 40 respectively in Quebec. Highway 416 and Autoroute 50 link the National Capital Region with Highway 401 and the Montreal area respectively, but the two freeways do not link directly with each other across the Ontario-Quebec border. Passenger rail service is provided in both provinces by the Via Rail Corridor Service. Intermediate points along the corridor include London, Kitchener, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal. The main water shipping route is the same as for the eastern part of the Chicago-Rochester corridor, starting at the Detroit River but continuing east beyond Lake Ontario along the St. Lawrence Seaway to Quebec City and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines, and Niagara Falls, Ontario in Canada and Niagara Falls, New York and Buffalo in the United States also form an almost continuous urban area.

Several corridors have interstate highways but no comprehensive passenger rail service. These highway routes pass through both core and fringe areas of the Great Lakes megalopolis. The upper Great lakes region has a marine corridor that connects Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan. However, this route does not include parallel Amtrak passenger rail or interstate highway service.

I-70 follows the southern fringe of the megaregion. It runs from Kansas City, MO to just south of Pittsburgh, PA by way of St. Louis, MO, Indianapolis, IN, and Columbus, OH.

Interstate 96 serves traffic between the Detroit and Grand Rapids metro areas. The route passes through Lansing on the way and extends to Muskegon to the northwest of Grand Rapids

I-69 extends from Evansville, IN to Martinsville, IN. From there, the route is temporarily an arterial highway, Indiana state route 37, to the I-465 ring-road around Indianapolis, IN. From there, I-69 resumes and continues to the west end of the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor which carries the route into southern Ontario and southern Quebec provinces. Intermediate points include Fort Wayne, IN, Lansing, Flint, and Port Huron, MI/Sarnia, ON.

I-75 runs from Saginaw, MI to Cincinnati, OH by way of Detroit, MI, Toledo, OH, Lima, OH, and Dayton, OH.

The waterway connecting Duluth MN and western Lake Superior to points east and south includes the Soo Locks connecting to Lake Huron, then south to Port Huron MI/ Sarnia ON or through the Straits of Mackinac to the metropolitan areas around Lake Michigan.

Rank

Area

State/
Province

Image

CSA/CMA
2009 population

Projected[17][18][19][20]
2025 population

Projected increase
2009-2025

Projected % increase
2009-2025

1

Chicago

Illinois
Indiana
Wisconsin

9,804,845

10,216,648

411,803

4.2

10

Cincinnati

Ohio
Kentucky
Indiana

2,214,954

2,448,000

233,046

10.5

Total CSA/CMA of major metro areas

60,323,653

65,735,336

6,234,698

10.0

Along the Great Lakes, there are 27 United States statistical areas - 13 Combined Statistical Areas, 3 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and 12 Micropolitan Statistical Areas, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget.

The following sortable table lists the 27 statistical areas of the United States located on the Great Lakes with the following information:

1. Statistical areas on this table are based off the map to the right. All of these statistical areas are located along the Great Lakes.

2. Populations are based on lists from: Combined Statistical Areas, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and Micropolitan Statistical Areas.

3. This list excludes Canadian cities along the Great Lakes.

The following four sortable tables list the 27 census statistical areas of the United States located on the Great Lakes, by lake, with the following information:

1. Populations are based on lists from: Combined Statistical Areas, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and Micropolitan Statistical Areas.

2. The list excludes Canadian cities along the Great Lakes.

A. ^ Various sources include Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa in the Great Lakes Megalopolis, while excluding Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Columbus. All these partial-consensus and non-consensus cities lie at the eastern, western, and southern fringes of the megalopolis.

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The Great Lakes Megalopolis consists of the group of metropolitan areas in North America largely in the Great Lakes region and along the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It extends from the Midwestern United States in the south and west to western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York in the east and northward through Southern Ontario into southwestern Quebec in Canada.

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(November 2011) Exactly 50 years ago, geographer Jean Gottmann coined the term "megalopolis" to describe the sprawling regional mega-city taking shape between Boston and Washington, D.C., gobbling up rural areas in its wake. ¹

"BosWash" is the nickname futurist Herman Kahn gave this potentially 400-mile urban area in the late 1960s. He called the urbanizing swath from Chicago to Pittsburgh along the Great Lakes and Ohio River "ChiPitts," and the California coastal development stretching from San Francisco to San Diego "SanSan." ²

In a 1967 book, he predicted that by 2000 one-half of the U.S. population would live in those three megalopolises and that any examination of U.S. population trends in the 21st century "would largely be a study of BosWash, ChiPitts, and SanSan." ³

But a somewhat different story has unfolded over the past 50 years, says Mark Mather, co-author of PRB's Reports on America: First Results From the 2010 Census. "The three megalopolises' share of U.S. population actually declined somewhat between 1960 and 2010," says Mather. "Rather than growing to encompass one-half of the U.S. population, the three areas are only home to about one-third of all U.S. residents."

Three Megalopolises, Population 1960 and 2010, and Percentage of U.S. Total Population

Note: See References below for definitions of the megalopolises.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of the Population, Vol. A, Part 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961) and for 2010 Census data, PRB's DataFinder, accessed at www.prb.org/DataFinder.aspx, on Oct. 24, 2011.

Mather and his co-authors highlighted several key population trends that observers in the 1960s had not fully anticipated:

The U.S. population has shifted to the South and West since the 1950s. Today the South is the most populous region, followed by the West, Midwest, and Northeast. In 2010, the West overtook the Midwest as the second most-populous census region-just as it overtook the Northeast in 1990.

Old industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest-often called the Rust Belt-lost population, as manufacturing declined and people left in search of better jobs. Many metro areas in ChiPitts-such as Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh-have been plagued by high rates of out-migration since the 1970s.

The fastest growing areas have been mainly outside the three megalopolises. These fast-growing areas included suburbs of metropolitan areas in the South and West, such as the region around Orlando, Fla.; the "Research Triangle" area of North Carolina; and the areas surrounding such cities as Las Vegas, Atlanta, and several cities in Texas (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin). The northern Virginia exurbs of Washington, D.C. -at the southern end of BosWash-are an exception.

Population aging has fueled growth in retirement destinations, which tend to be outside the three metropolises. During the 2000s, retirement-destination counties-ones that are attractive to people age 60 and older-were among the big demographic "winners." One-third of the 440 retirement counties grew at least twice the national average between 2000 and 2010. Two of the large, fast-growing retirement destinations are Maricopa County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada.

But Gottmann's main message-sprawling urban growth- reflects population dynamics still at play today, Mather noted:

The U.S. population shifted from rural areas to urban and suburban communities, a trend begun in the 1930s. Today more than 80 percent of U.S. residents live in metropolitan areas. The U.S. metropolitan population grew 11 percent during the 2000s, more than double the rate for areas outside metros. Metros in the South and West grew fastest, while the metro population in the Northeast and Midwest increased at less than half the national rate.

Within metropolitan areas, most U.S. population growth during the past century has taken place in suburban areas, rather than central cities. By 2010, 51 percent of the population lived in suburbs, compared to 31 percent in 1960. The share of the population living in central cities has remained fairly constant; it was 32 percent in 1960 and is 33 percent today.

The rural population has shrunk dramatically, as rural areas have lost population or have been swallowed up in sprawling nearby metropolitan areas. The rural areas that have seen significant population losses in recent decades include much of the Great Plains and northern and central Appalachia. In fact, nearly half of the 1,104 counties that lost people during the 2000s were counties that were isolated from metropolitan areas and had small or nonexistent urban populations.

Paola Scommegna is senior writer/editor at the Population Reference Bureau.

References

1. Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1961)

2. Herman Khan and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years (New York: Macmillan, 1967): 61.

3. Kahn and Wiener, The Year 2000.

4. The megalopolises grew during the 50-year period to encompass previously rural adjacent counties: BosWash includes metro Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., plus many adjacent counties identified in Gottmann's original analysis; ChiPitts includes metro Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Akron, Toledo, and Detroit; and SanSan includes metro San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and San Diego.

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(November 2011) Exactly 50 years ago, geographer Jean Gottmann coined the term "megalopolis" to describe the sprawling regional mega-city taking shape between Boston and Washington, D.C., gobbling up rural areas in its wake. 1 "BosWash" is the nickname futurist Herman Kahn gave this potentially 400-mile urban area in the late 1960s.

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Magalopilis USA

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The BosWash megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, extending from Boston to Washington and linked by economics, transport, and communications. The high-speed Amtrak train, the Acela, runs the length of the BosWash area.

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Prairie

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Prairies are enormous stretches of flat grassland with moderate temperatures, moderate rainfall, and few trees. When people talk about the prairie, they are usually referring to the golden, wheat-covered land in the middle of North America.

Subjects

Biology, Ecology, Earth Science, Geography, Physical Geography

Prairies are enormous stretches of flat grassland with moderate temperatures, moderate rainfall, and few trees.

When people talk about the prairie, they are usually referring to the golden, wheat-covered land in the middle of North America. The Great Plains, in the United States and Canada, has some of the world's most valuable prairies, which grow some of the world's most important crops. The U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan make up the Great Plains.

The prairies in North America formed as the Rocky Mountains grew taller and taller. They grew taller and taller because of plate tectonics, the process where a small number of plates on the Earth's crust interact with each other. Once the mountains got tall enough, they blocked significant amounts of rain from falling on the east side of the mountains, creating what is called a rain shadow. This rain shadow prevented trees from growing extensively east of the mountains, and the result was the prairie landscape.

The North American prairie is ideal for agriculture. In fact, of the two million acres of North American prairie, less than one percent is not used for agricultural development. The weather is moderate, and there are no trees to move to create large, open fields. The very small hills on the prairie are called pimples, and they usually don't rise taller than 1.5 meters (four feet). The prairie grasses hold the soil firmly in place, so soil erosion is minimal. Prairie grass roots are very good at reaching water very far down under the surface, and they can live for a very long time. Grains are a type of grass, so the prairie grassland is perfect for growing grain like wheat, rye, and oats.

North American prairie grass is usually split into three different groups: wet, mesic, and dry. Wet prairie soil is usually very moist, and it doesn't drain water very well. The Woolsey Wet Prairie Sanctuary, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, has revived more than 300 native plant species. All the plants in the Woolsey Wet Prairie Sanctuary, a project that was started in 2001, were grown without planting new seeds-native prairie plant seeds can lie dormant for more than 50 years, until the soil and climate conditions allow the plants to grow.

Mesic prairies have good drainage and good moisture in the soil. This type of prairie is popular for farming and agriculture. The mesic prairie of Saskatchewan is known as the "Breadbasket of Canada."

Dry prairies are more arid than wet or mesic prairies. They have good drainage and are often found on hills, slopes, or higher elevations. Because dry prairies are not useful for agricultural or business development, they retain much of their natural landscape. Species native to the dry prairie include the timber rattlesnake ( Crotalus horridus) and the greater prairie-chicken ( Tympanuchus cupido), which is nearly extinct in most other prairie ecosystems.

Some animal species contribute to the prairie ecosystem's agricultural value. The American bison ( Bison bison), a relative of cattle, is native to the North American prairie. Bison are the largest land mammals in North America, but they have small, pointed hooves. These hooves turn up the soil, just like a plow does. This aerates the soil and allows it to hold more water.

By the middle of the 20th century, nearly all the North American prairie grasslands had been destroyed due to extensive farming. The result was miles and miles of soil with no strong prairie grass to hold it in place, and few trees to block the wind. When drought, a period of little rain, struck the prairie in the 1930s, high winds blew the dry soil into huge, frequent dust storms, devastating the Great Plains. The Great Plains were called the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression period.

Large stretches of grasslands called pampas in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil are similar to the North American prairie. The pampas are among the chief agricultural areas of South America. In addition to cattle grazing and wheat farming, Argentina also has vineyards in the pampas.

Fast Fact

Buffalo Commons
Many people in the United States and Canada support the idea of the "Buffalo Commons." The Buffalo Commons would return hundreds of thousands of acres of the Great Plains to native prairie grassland.

Fast Fact

Where the 'Buffalo' Roam
American Bison ( Bison bison), often mistakenly called "buffalo," used to roam the Great Plains. Bison moved in enormous herds, many times the size of the great wildebeest migration in Africa. Despite their huge size and numbers, bison almost became extinct in the late 1800s in large part because of overhunting.

Media Credits

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Illustrators

Mary Crooks, National Geographic Society

Editors

Jeannie Evers, Emdash Editing, Emdash Editing

Producer

National Geographic Society

other

Last Updated

September 5, 2023

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Prairies are enormous stretches of flat grassland with moderate temperatures, moderate rainfall, and few trees. When people talk about the prairie, they are usually referring to the golden, wheat-covered land in the middle of North America.

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National Geographic

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A map gallery shows commonly described regions in the United States. A map with and without state abbreviations is included.