Synopses & Reviews
With an expected population of 400 million by 2040, America is morphing into an economic system composed of 23 megapolitan areas that will dominate the nation's economy by midcentury. These megapolitan areas are networks of metropolitan areas sharing common economic, landscape, social, and cultural characteristics.
The rise of megapolitan areas will change how America plans. For instance, in an area comparable in size to France and the low countries of the Netherlands and Belgium?considered among the world's most densely settled?America's megapolitan areas are already home to more than 2.5 times as many people. Indeed, with only 18 percent of the contiguous 48 states? land base, America's megapolitan areas are more densely settled than Europe as a whole or the United Kingdom.
Megapolitan America goes into spectacular demographic, economic, and social detail in mapping the dramatic?and surprisingly optimistic?shifts ahead. It will be required reading for those interested in America's future.
Synopsis
In popular imagination, America is the land of wide open spaces. But in reality, much of it is more densely populated than Europe. Two-thirds of the U.S. population lives on less than 20 percent of the privately owned land, clustered in 20-some megapolitan areas--networks of metropolitan centers fused by common economic, physical, social, and cultural traits.
Megapolitan America draws on detailed data to map out the dramatic--and surprisingly positive--shifts ahead. Backed by hard numbers, Nelson and Lang argue for long-range planning that sheds outdated images and stokes the nation's economic engines. This is required reading for everyone who cares about America's future.