Geographical Model of a Self-Organising Megalopolis with Time-Space Convergence

Abstract

In industrialised countries, urban population and industrial production have been concentrated in some metropolitan areas, which have created a megalopolis from the expansion of their suburbs, where socio-economic functions of large cities are strongly linked with each other by high-speed transportation networks. For example, the United States megalopolis is well-known as a belt of large cities from Boston through New York to Washington D.C. on the Atlantic coast, and the Japanese megalopolis connects three metropolitan areas, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka on the Pacific coast. Newly industrialised Asian countries or regions, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia, are also developing megalopolis embryos or development belts. It can be generally stated that, as a national economy develops, one specific region becomes a megalopolis at the expense of the other regions. This phenomenon raises two questions. What economic processes differentiate the megalopolis from under-developed areas? Which geographical areas can selectively become a megalopolis? Two types of studies, the “more economic” and “more geographic” economic geographies (Lukermann, 1958), have tackled these questions in the location-theory literature.