ChiPitts

The ChiPitts megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes region or Midwest of the United States along with portions of the province of Ontario, Canada; also a very little of Quebec, extending from Pittsburgh to Chicago and linked by economics, transport, and communications. The geographic trend was first identified in the 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States by French geographer Jean Gottmann.

Gottmann also envisaged the development of two similar megalopolises in the US: BosWash from Boston to Washington, DC and SanSan from San Francisco to San Diego.

List of cities

The major cities in the ChiPitts megalopolis include the following:

United States

• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Erie, Pennsylvania
• Detroit, Michigan
• Escanaba, Michigan
• Flint, Michigan
• Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Marquette, Michigan
• Saginaw, Michigan
• Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Toledo, Ohio
• Columbus, Ohio
• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Fort Wayne, Indiana
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• South Bend, Indiana
• Rockford, Illinois
• Aurora, Illinois
• Joliet, Illinois
• Chicago, Illinois
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Fox Cities, Wisconsin
• Green Bay, Wisconsin

Canada

• Niagara Falls, Ontario
• North Bay, Ontario
• Ottawa, Ontario
• Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
• Sudbury, Ontario
• Toronto, Ontario
• Windsor, Ontario
• Montreal, Quebec
• Quebec City, Quebec

The estimated population of this megalopolis is 54 million people.

US Census statistics

Rank	Combined Statistical Area	State(s)	2004 Estimate	2000 Population	1990 Population	Percent Change (1990-2000)
3	Chicago-Aurora-Michigan City	IL-IN-WI	9,608,458	9,312,255	8,385,397	11.1
9	Detroit-Warren-Flint	MI	5,428,855	5,357,538	5,095,695	5.1
14	Cleveland-Akron-Elyria	OH	2,942,303	2,945,831	2,859,644	3.0
17	Pittsburgh-New Castle	PA	2,494,949	2,525,730	2,564,535	-1.5
19	Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington	OH-KY-IN	2,100,501	2,050,175	1,880,332	9.0
22	Indianapolis-Anderson-Columbus	IN	1,939,349	1,843,588	1,594,779	15.6
24	Columbus-Marion-Chillicothe	OH	1,920,601	1,835,189	1,613,711	13.7
25	Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha	WI	1,709,926	1,689,572	1,607,183	5.1
	Combined CSAs	US	28,144,942	27,559,878	25,601,276	7.6

The table above does not include:

• Metropolitan Statistical Areas not part of a CSA (see List of United States metropolitan statistical areas by population),
• micropolitan or rural areas (see List of United States micropolitan statistical areas by population),
• or Canada (Toronto is at the centre of the Golden Horseshoe, a densely populated region in Ontario which is home to roughly eight million people, or one quarter of the Canadian population)

Related terms

The Pittsburgh-Chicago Corridor is an academic Urban Studies term that describes the area running through the Rust Belt from the Mid-Atlantic to the Western Great Lakes.

The Steel City Corridor ideally describes the area connecting Cleveland to Pittsburgh via Youngstown-Warren (OH), and Sharon-Farrell-New Castle (PA). Historically, these areas are known as the Steel Valleys (Mahoning and Shenango).

ChiPitts also roughly has the same boundaries as the Rust Belt.