“An almost continuous system of deeply interwoven urban and suburban areas, with a total population of about 37 million people in 1960, has been erected along the Northeastern Atlantic seaboard. It straddles state boundaries, stretches across wide estuaries and bays, and encompasses many regional differences.” Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis
Back in 1961, French-Ukraine geographer Jean Gottmann in his seminal 20-year study of the U.S. Northeast Atlantic coast popularized the expression megalopolis. Gottmann viewed the Portland, Maine to Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia expanse as one great urban corridor (often called the Boston-Washington DC corridor) composed of independent cities linked by overlapping suburban zones. In a night view from space (see issue 686 cover photo) the lights from the cities in the Northeast – Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. – indeed merge into a great 800-mile glowing north-south swath, like Gottmann’s megalopolis. It is perhaps unfair to say it is solely a U.S. corridor as the Canadian cities of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, Nova Scotia (see Leo Ryan story Leading Canadian East Coast container ports mapping future) also loosely fall within the orbit of the Northeast megalopolis. While they are linked east-to-west with the rest of Canada, in many respects the region has closer economic ties to the U.S. Northeast – especially New England – than Western Canada. But whatever the measure, the Northeast megalopolis is a unique multilayered region with a deep global footprint which still marks it as one of the truly great centers of international commerce. If the economic rise had happened in another place – like China, Japan or Europe – it would have been described as an economic “miracle” or a “revolution.” But in the highly industrialized Northeast, there was always an expectation of a growth in commerce, like an expectation of sunshine in southern California.
But the Northeast corridor is more than a string of lights, it’s arguably the world’s greatest economic zone. Over 56 million people live in the corridor and even with the rise of other U.S. megalopolis regions like the greater Atlanta corridor in the southeast or Los Angeles-Long Beach region in California, the original Northeast megalopolis is still the most densely populated region in the U.S. In rough terms, the corridor has a GDP of $4.4 trillion – a little over 20% of the U.S. total. Individually four states have a GDP over $500 billion, topped by New York at around $1.5-$1.7 trillion. While California and Texas have higher GDPs, and the Chicago area is its own megalopolis, no other region has so many $500 billion states in such close proximity. It is a major country’s worth of GDP. To put it in a global perspective, the Northeast region has a slightly larger GDP than Germany – the world’s fourth largest economy.
In his megalopolis study, Gottmann dubbed the Northeast corridor, “Main Street” USA. But over the ensuing 58 years, the north-south corridor built around Route 1, has become a superhighway of commerce not only linking the individual segments of the megalopolis but as the gateway to the U.S. Midwest – the North American hinterland.
And two major economic influences of the last half century have shaped the Northeast corridor in ways even Gottmann couldn’t have foreseen. The rise of consumerism and containerization – an unexpected attribute of globalization which began in Port Newark with the sailing of the world’s first containership, the SS Ideal X in 1955.
Mega-portal
It’s the Big Apple. It is hard to overlook the enormous economic gravity that metropolitan New York exerts on the entire Northeast region. It is the Jupiter of cities with a dozen satellite cities in its orbit. Without it, the Northeast would still be a significant economic entity but the sheer volume of activity of the City has a defining impact on the region. There is something like a thousand corporate headquarters in metropolitan New York including 52 fortune 500 companies – such economic power is nearly unmatchable, not only in North America but the world.
But it is the unquenchable demand for consumer goods that draws containership (see Peter Buxbaum article Port of New York/New Jersey tackling port congestion) services into the whirlpool. Virtually every containership operator wants to center their East Coast services – whether coming from the East or the West - around the call in the Port of New York/New Jersey. In a real sense, every port from Norfolk, Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Maine is in competition (or collaboration) with the Port of New York/New Jersey. With larger ships –over 14,000 TEU – and fewer port calls, the lure of 8.6 million consumers packed into a little over 300 sq./mi is nearly irresistible. For containership operators, it is the ship call that matches their mantra of economies-of-scale like no other. The containers are offloaded and their contents consumed within miles of the piers, only to be reloaded on the ships to start the process again – the perfect circle of life for container shipping.
But PANYNJ is both the destination and the gateway. Freight movements from New England to Virginia are pulled into the New York/New Jersey orbit. Equally the Port is key to moving freight to destinations like Chicago, St Louis and Kansas City. In recent years, Southeastern ports like Charleston and Savannah (which are growing faster) have also risen to compete for the U.S. heartland, as have the Ports of Virginia, Port of Baltimore and to a lesser extent the Delaware River ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. But the rotation of ships is largely set up by the allure of the bright lights of New York. Last year the Port posted over 7 million TEUs and the next closest rival, the Port of Norfolk was less than 3 million TEUs.
And the draw of NYC is very long and the question can be posed of whether the $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal would have occurred without the economic promise of the Big Apple?
Still there are limitations even to the Port of New York/New Jersey. Moving freight over an antiquated infrastructure (despite the improvement to port bridges, terminals and rail) through a densely packed urban environment adds up to congestion and inevitably to delays. Congestion is the Achilles heel of the New York’s hub and spoke system and represents an opening, an opportunity for other regional ports to exploit.
And there is good reason for the ports to take the plunge. Virtually all of the ports in the Northeast corridor have shown sustained growth since the 2009 Great Recession. But to convince the container ocean carriers of the merits of an additional Northeast ship call to their rotation, the Northeast ports have to ante up with infrastructure and freight that makes it worthwhile…and in many cases, they have.
Take for example, the Port of Virginia. The POV recently completed the $375 million Phase I of the NIT (Norfolk International Terminals) expansion project which includes 12 new container stacks and 24 new rail-mounted gantry (RMG) cranes. Phase II is underway and is scheduled to be complete in 2020 adding 400,000 TEUs of capacity (850,000 to 1.25 million) to the terminal. It is part of the POV’s strategy of handling the 20,000 TEU linehaul ships currently operating on Asia-Europe routes, providing a gateway to the U.S. Midwest markets.
PhilaPort recently received two more super post-Panamax cranes for their Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, the Port’s main container terminal, which is currently undergoing $300 million dollars in terminal improvement projects. In the Port of Baltimore, a major expansion is underway at Tradepoint Atlantic site – a multi-use site on Sparrows Point that recently celebrated the opening of an 850,000 sq./ft fulfillment center. Even the Port of Boston is undergoing a similar program of dredging and adding new cranes – albeit with the more modest goal of being the hub port for New England.
Megalopolis 2.0
Although the Megalopolis of Gottmann’s book is long gone, reshaped by forces that even Gottmann couldn’t foresee, Megalopolis 2.0 has risen and is still growing. Oxford Economics says in its annual Global Cities report that financial and business services will keep New York City in first place in 2035. In that year, the report projects metro New York City to have annual output of $2.5 trillion after adjusting for inflation. This places New York City at the top of not only U.S. metropolitan regions but globally, even ahead of cities like Tokyo and London. What’s more, it reinforces the importance of the region even with the economic and population growth in the Southeast, Southwest and Far West, which are outpacing the Northeast.
But as Gottmann noted in his book, the “region indeed reminds one of Aristotle’s saying that cities such as Babylon had ‘the compass of a nation rather than a city.’”
