Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
The line between L.A. and S.D. is pretty clear, while the line between NY and Philadelphia is extremely arbitrary.
|
Not really? I mean given you live in NY so I understand if your perception, but if you've only ever driven down I-5 then you would think there's a clear geographic separation between the southern fringe of LA at San Clemente and San Diego's northern fringe at Oceanside. This is due to Camp Pendleton, but Camp Pendleton doesn't extend without end inland. Because along the I-15 there is a contiguous chain of cities of Fallbrook (North San Diego County) and Temecula/Murrieta (Riverside County). In fact, these cities have magnitudes higher population densities then the fringe spillovers of West Windsor or South Brunswick townships; Fallbrook has nearly twice the population density of these Northeast suburbs, while places like Temecula/Murrieta have 3-4 times the population density of these Northeast suburbs between NY and Philly. LA and San Diego commuter sheds also mesh around here; Temecula/Murrieta communities are split about 50/50 between commuting to San Diego county versus commuting north/west into OC, LA, or I.E. Of course, by European standards neither of these places would be considered "urbanized area" by any means (or else a bulk of the continent would be considered a single urban swathe, which is ridiculous), but if your going to apply a certain set of standards for NY/Philly in order to insinuate the two should be classed as a single metro, then the same standards also apply to LA and San Diego. Of course, that was beside my point, which was that since both NY and Philly or LA and San Diego developed separately, their centers of gravity simply are not intertwined in the way dual-core metropolitan areas are, no matter how much you improve transit connections between them. Just because I can hop on a bullet train that comes every 3 minutes into Osaka from Tokyo for a business meeting and be back by dinner, doesn't mean the corridor between Tokyo or Osaka should be considered a single metro.
I find that Northeasterners in particular have this kind of mentality of conflating a megalopolis with a metropolitan area (maybe due to a desire to fulfill a superiority complex?). And that's what the term megalopolis is actually supposed mean re: NY + Philly or LA + SD; that is, deeply linked cities who share relationships far more than a typical intercity relationship, but aren't exactly cohesively linked enough to be considered one.