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:
- 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
- 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.