ChiPitts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ChiPitts, or "Great Lakes" megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes region or Midwest of the United States along with Western Pennsylvania and Western New York, 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. Being that it is very close to Canada's Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, many areas in Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec (or contrarily Western New York and Southeast Michigan) can be argued as to which megalopolis they are in. It should be noted, however, that since Gottmann's original publication, many constituent portions of this corridor have suffered job loss and in some cases diminished populations.

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

[edit] List of cities

The major cities in the ChiPitts megalopolis include the following: (Note: as it says above, areas in Southern Canada, Western New York and Southeast Michigan can be considered to be a part of the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, not ChiPitts.)

• Wisconsin
  • Green Bay, Wisconsin Pop: 102,313
  • Kenosha, Wisconsin Pop: 92,801
  • Appleton, Wisconsin Pop: 70,087
  • Waukesha, Wisconsin Pop: 68,545
  • Racine, Wisconsin Pop: 81,855
  • Madison, Wisconsin Pop: 221,551
  • Milwaukee, Wisconsin Pop: 578,887
• Illinois
  • Aurora, Illinois Pop: 157,267
  • Chicago, Illinois Pop: 2,900,000 (The third largest city in the United States)
  • Elgin, Illinois Pop: 98,645
  • Joliet, Illinois Pop: 145,803 (fastest growing city in the Midwest and 14th fastest in the United States)
  • Naperville, Illinois Pop: 140,106 (one of the fastest growing cities in Illinois and in the United States)
  • Rockford, Illinois Pop: 150,115
  • Waukegan, Illinois Pop: 91,396
• Indiana
  • Indianapolis, Indiana Pop: 794,160
  • Hammond, Indiana Pop: 83,048
  • East Chicago, Indiana Pop: 32,414
  • Fort Wayne, Indiana Pop: 248,341
  • Gary, Indiana Pop: 102,746
  • South Bend, Indiana Pop: 107,789
• Michigan
  • Ann Arbor, Michigan Pop: 114,024
  • Battle Creek, Michigan Pop: 53,364
  • Detroit, Michigan Pop: 886,675
  • Flint, Michigan Pop: 124,943
  • Grand Rapids, Michigan Pop: 197,800
  • Kalamazoo, Michigan Pop: 77,145
  • Lansing, Michigan Pop: 119,128
• Ohio
  • Cleveland, Ohio Pop: 478,403
  • Cincinnati, Ohio Pop: 317,361
  • Columbus, Ohio Pop: 728,432
  • Toledo, Ohio Pop: 313,619
  • Akron, Ohio Pop: 217,074
  • Dayton, Ohio Pop: 166,179
  • Youngstown, Ohio Pop: 82,026
• Pennsylvania
  • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pop: 334,569
  • Erie, Pennsylvania Pop: 103,717
• New York
  • Buffalo, New York Pop: 282,064
  • Niagara Falls, New York Pop: 55,593
• Ontario, Canada
  • Windsor, Ontario Pop: 208,402
  • Kitchener, Ontario Pop: 209,200
  • Hamilton, Ontario Pop: 500,000
  • Mississauga, Ontario Pop: 700,000
  • Toronto, Ontario Pop: 2,613,900

The estimated population of this megalopolis is 54 million people.

[edit] 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	9,661,840	9,312,255	8,385,397	11.1
9	Detroit-Warren-Flint	MI	5,428,000	5,357,538	5,095,695	5.1
14	Cleveland-Akron-Elyria	OH	2,931,774	2,945,831	2,859,644	3.0
17	Pittsburgh-New Castle	PA	2,478,883	2,525,730	2,564,535	-1.5
20	Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington	OH-KY-IN	2,113,011	2,050,175	1,880,332	9.0
22	Indianapolis-Anderson-Columbus	IN	1,958,453	1,843,588	1,594,779	15.6
24	Columbus–Marion–Chillicothe	OH	1,936,351	1,835,189	1,613,711	13.7
26	Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha	WI	1,708,563	1,689,572	1,607,183	5.1
	Combined CSAs	US	30,081,293	29,395,067	27,214,987	8.0

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)

[edit] 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.