Megalopolis - Location
The site and the situation of this vast urban region hold clues to its origins and growth. Many of the site characteristics are visible in the region's outline. Occupying a coastal position, the eastern margin of Megalopolis is deeply convoluted. Peninsulas jut into the Atlantic Ocean. Islands are scattered along the coast, some large enough to support communities. Bays and river estuaries penetrate the landmass in a kind of mirror image of the land's penetration of the ocean. This interpenetrated coastline brings more land area close to the ocean and, in this way, provides greater opportunity for access to cheap water transportation than would a straighter coast.
Quality harbors must also be present, and Megalopolis straddles some of the best natural harbors in America. The northern half of Megalopolis was covered by ice during the most recent of the continental glaciers. As the ice cover began to melt, large river spillways were formed. The erosive power of the rivers cut deeply into the flat coastal plain. As sea level rose, the lower river valleys were "drowned" to form estuaries, and the ocean margin was shifted toward the land's interior. These glacial river valleys formed some of the harbors that later proved useful in the development of Megalopolis.
The other major contribution of the glacial period is more specific to one or two locations. The large amounts of soil, stone, and other debris scraped up by the expanding glaciers were deposited as moraines when the ice front retreated. One series of ridges was left by retreating glaciers just south of what is now the coast of Connecticut. These moraines developed as an island when the seas rose, and it was widened by deposition from the ocean. The island was not made so wide, however, that it could be called anything except Long Island.
Long Island has enhanced the quality of New York's harbor in two major ways. First, the length of coastline available for port facilities, already significant along the Hudson River, is increased considerably. Second, when an urban area grows around a large, fully developed harbor, the growth creates a demand for more space. Good land to accommodate the New York area's urban growth was restricted to the west of the Hudson River in New Jersey by tidal marshes and the erosion-resistant ridge of the Palisades. To the east of the Hudson lies only a narrow finger of land, Manhattan Island. But beyond the East River is Long Island, a flat to slightly rolling land without the barrier marshes of New Jersey. New York's boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens developed early at the western tip of Long Island, and the island offered a great deal of room for further urban expansion toward the east.
Although Megalopolis possesses many high-quality harbors, there are few other site characteristics that contributed so positively to the region's urban economic development. The climate is not exceptionally mild, although the summers are generally of sufficient length and wetness to support farming. Soils are variable, with the soils inland from Baltimore, Maryland, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, better than most found closer to New York.
The general topographic features of Megalopolis south of New York do provide additional urban site benefits. Traveling inland from the Atlantic Coast, a very flat coastal plain is succeeded by a rolling, frequently hilly landscape called the Piedmont. The irregularly rolling relief of the Piedmont is underlain by very old, very hard rocks. This surface is resistant to erosion, and the level of the Piedmont is maintained above that of the coastal plain. Wherever rivers flow off the Piedmont, therefore, a series of rapids and small waterfalls are formed along a line tracing the physiographic boundary--a boundary known as the fall line.
Early settlers found the fall line to be a hindrance to water navigation but an obvious source of water power. Settlements developed along the fall line, locations as far inland as possible but still possessing access to ocean shipping. In addition, because the fall line was often the head of navigation, goods brought inland or those to be exported had to be unloaded at fall line locations for transfer to another mode of transport. These sites also benefited from goods moving for export from the interior to the head of river navigation. In many cases, manufacturing processes could be applied here as well.
This portion of North America was also on or near the most direct sea route between Europe and the productive plantations of the Caribbean colonies and southern America, at least on the homeward voyage. The ports around which Megalopolis later grew, therefore, were convenient stopping places and contributed actively to the transoceanic trade that expanded rapidly during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Also critical to this growth was the location of the core cities relative to the country's interior. Philadelphia and Baltimore grew rapidly because each was the focus of a relatively good-sized and good-quality agricultural region. Access routes to the interior were constructed early and helped support the growth of the trading functions of these cities. Inland from Boston, the soils were (and are) too shallow and rocky and the terrain too rolling for good farming, but the New England hills were covered with hardwood and pine forests nearly ideal for ship construction. Also accessible were the very productive fishing banks off the New England coast and farther south in the rich Chesapeake Bay area.
The importance of accessibility in evaluating a city's situation, however, is most apparent in the case of New York, whose chief advantage lay in its position at the head of the best natural route through the Appalachian Mountains. The Hudson-Mohawk River system, later amplified by the Erie Canal, railroads, and highways, provides access to the Great Lakes to the west, which, in turn, provide access to the broad interior of the country. As settlement density and economic activity on the interior plains increased, large amounts of the goods produced were carried to the urban cores of Megalopolis. The city that benefited most from this growing trade was the one with the greatest natural access to the interior: New York.
During America's colonial period, as trade grew between Europe, the Caribbean area, and the American mainland, small-scale manufacturing began to appear in the larger port cities from Baltimore northward. As urban industry grew, the demand for labor increased, drawing immigrants from northwestern Europe or diverting large numbers of workers from farming, thus swelling the populations of these cities. Banks and other financial institutions underwrote investments in local manufacturing and shipping. Service activities, wholesale and retail businesses, centers of information and control all grew and supported further urban expansion, with the greatest growth occurring in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore.
The most unusual feature of this region is not the fact that these cities grew, but that four such large cities (later to become five with the addition of Washington) continued to grow in close proximity to one another. Washington is unique, of course, because even though it, too, is located on the fall line, its growth has followed directly from expansion of the national government structure. The other four cities, along with many smaller ones along the Megalopolitan axis, depended largely on economic stimulation. So great was national growth during the 19th century, and so strong were the linkages between the interior and these four ports, that none of the four could wholly absorb the flow of goods to any of its neighbors and competitors. By the turn of the 20th century, the combined economic resources of these cities' hinterlands had reached continental proportions.
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