BosWash
Categories: Geographic portmanteaus | Metropolitan areas of the United States
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 and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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, contains a reported population of 44 million, or 16% of the population of the United States, 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, 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, six of the eight Ivy League schools, along with MIT, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown University, NYU, and two of the three major service academies. The high-speed Amtrak train, the Acela Express, runs on the Northeast Corridor, an electrified rail line extending the length of the BosWash area.
The major cities in the BosWash megalopolis include the following (North-to-South):
- Manchester, New Hampshire
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Providence, Rhode Island
- Springfield, Massachusetts
- Worcester, Massachusetts
- Hartford, Connecticut
- New Haven, Connecticut
- Bridgeport, Connecticut
- New York, New York
- Jersey City, New Jersey
- Newark, New Jersey
- Paterson, New Jersey
- Allentown, Pennsylvania
- Trenton, New Jersey
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Atlantic City, New Jersey
- Wilmington, Delaware
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Annapolis, Maryland
- Washington, District of Columbia
- Arlington, Virginia
- Alexandria, Virginia
- Richmond, Virginia
See also: List of U.S. multistate regions