In 1962, French geographer Jean Gottmann wrote a seminal book called, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. And in it, he described the remarkable clustering of cities in the northeast, running from Boston in the north to Washington D.C. in the south. He called this the Northeast Megalopolis.
In 1962, French geographer Jean Gottmann wrote a seminal book called, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. And in it, he described the remarkable clustering of cities in the northeast, running from Boston in the north to Washington D.C. in the south. He called this the Northeast Megalopolis.
The term megalopolis simply refers to a clustering or chain of generally adjacent metropolitan areas.
Then in the 1960s and 1970s, architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis started writing about the emergence of what he called the Great Lakes Megalopolis. In his mind, a contiguous urban region was forming that stretched all the way from Chicago in the west to Quebec City in the north east. And at its economic center was the city of Detroit.
According to his research, these two mega-regions have a combined population of almost 60 million people and an economic output equivalent to almost $3 trillion. That places it in line with the Northeast Megalopolis. But according to the Brookings Institution, the output coming from the Great Lakes could be closer to $4.5 trillion.
Whatever the case may be and whatever you want to call it, the Great Lakes Megalopolis is unquestionably an economic and cultural powerhouse. But this has me wondering whether or not we’re doing enough to unleash its full potential.
When I attended Joe Berridge’s talk last week on Toronto as a global city, I asked him how he thought we should be organizing our cities and regions. Do city-states make sense? Should we be rethinking the relationship between provinces/states and cities?
His response was that we should be creating agencies and entities with regional authority (as opposed to fighting to make any constitutional changes). For example, the Toronto region should not have an array of competing transit agencies (as it does today). It should have one regional transit authority that blankets the region. People, ideas, and capital don’t follow borders.
So with that in mind, what opportunities are there for us to unite the metropolitan areas within the Great Lakes Megalopolis?
The first idea that comes to my mind is a high speed rail network that seamlessly connects to each city’s local transit network. Imagine a Great Lakes bullet train that could zip you across the region. It would completely reorganize the spatial landscape.
There has been a global shift of economic power and influence from nation states to cities and city-regions. Today’s successful cities collaborate across existing boundaries to form polycentric metropolitan regions. As a result cities function in a much less self-contained manner than they did fifty years ago. Longterm trends in the pattern of urban settlement reflect the interplay between opportunities for dispersal afforded by greater mobility, and economic and social forces promoting concentration.
But what else could we be doing to empower the Great Lakes Megalopolis?
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. I think there’s a strong case to be made for thinking at the scale of the megalopolis and not just at the scale of our own backyard.
Today, more than 125,000 health-care professionals use Figure 1 to view or share free medical imagery, including photos of patients with personally identifiable details blurred out or excluded; x-rays; charts; and still images taken from MRI or CAT scans, for example.
The app’s users include board-certified doctors, registered nurses, medical and nursing students, physicians’ assistants, and others who use the app and share images for teaching and studying purposes, or even to request community feedback about a possible diagnosis.
With this round, USV is now up to 3 investments in the Toronto/Waterloo region (I think of us as one center). The other 2 are Kik (out of Waterloo) and Wattpad, which is actually headquartered here in the St. Lawrence Market.
What’s exciting to me about all of this is that it’s further evidence of a growing and thriving Toronto/Waterloo startup ecosystem. And while to some it may not seem like a big deal for yet another mobile app to receive funding, it’s actually great news.
Because as these companies grow and become successful, they’ll not only create new jobs in the region, but also create a tremendous amount of wealth and expertise. And when this wealth and expertise gets reinvested into future startups, you end up with a powerful snowball effect. That’s how startup ecosystems are built.
It’s also great to see companies staying put, because the pull towards more established startup hubs can be significant. When my friend Evgeny raised a Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz last year, he told me that they asked him to move 500px down to California. As is the case with a lot of VCs, they like their portfolio companies to be nearby.
But ultimately 500px decided to stay headquartered here in downtown Toronto. And they did that for a few reasons: There’s lots of great engineering talent here and it usually comes at a discount relative to California (5-15%). He also finds that employees here are more loyal. There's less turnover. In California, everyone is looking for that next best startup to join. Here 500px gets to be that big fish in a small pond.
Anyways, a big congratulations to the Figure1 team. I hope they continue crushing it and that they stay put in Toronto. If you’re a healthcare professional, you can click here to download the app.
The term megalopolis simply refers to a clustering or chain of generally adjacent metropolitan areas.
Then in the 1960s and 1970s, architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis started writing about the emergence of what he called the Great Lakes Megalopolis. In his mind, a contiguous urban region was forming that stretched all the way from Chicago in the west to Quebec City in the north east. And at its economic center was the city of Detroit.
According to his research, these two mega-regions have a combined population of almost 60 million people and an economic output equivalent to almost $3 trillion. That places it in line with the Northeast Megalopolis. But according to the Brookings Institution, the output coming from the Great Lakes could be closer to $4.5 trillion.
Whatever the case may be and whatever you want to call it, the Great Lakes Megalopolis is unquestionably an economic and cultural powerhouse. But this has me wondering whether or not we’re doing enough to unleash its full potential.
When I attended Joe Berridge’s talk last week on Toronto as a global city, I asked him how he thought we should be organizing our cities and regions. Do city-states make sense? Should we be rethinking the relationship between provinces/states and cities?
His response was that we should be creating agencies and entities with regional authority (as opposed to fighting to make any constitutional changes). For example, the Toronto region should not have an array of competing transit agencies (as it does today). It should have one regional transit authority that blankets the region. People, ideas, and capital don’t follow borders.
So with that in mind, what opportunities are there for us to unite the metropolitan areas within the Great Lakes Megalopolis?
The first idea that comes to my mind is a high speed rail network that seamlessly connects to each city’s local transit network. Imagine a Great Lakes bullet train that could zip you across the region. It would completely reorganize the spatial landscape.
There has been a global shift of economic power and influence from nation states to cities and city-regions. Today’s successful cities collaborate across existing boundaries to form polycentric metropolitan regions. As a result cities function in a much less self-contained manner than they did fifty years ago. Longterm trends in the pattern of urban settlement reflect the interplay between opportunities for dispersal afforded by greater mobility, and economic and social forces promoting concentration.
But what else could we be doing to empower the Great Lakes Megalopolis?
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. I think there’s a strong case to be made for thinking at the scale of the megalopolis and not just at the scale of our own backyard.
Today, more than 125,000 health-care professionals use Figure 1 to view or share free medical imagery, including photos of patients with personally identifiable details blurred out or excluded; x-rays; charts; and still images taken from MRI or CAT scans, for example.
The app’s users include board-certified doctors, registered nurses, medical and nursing students, physicians’ assistants, and others who use the app and share images for teaching and studying purposes, or even to request community feedback about a possible diagnosis.
With this round, USV is now up to 3 investments in the Toronto/Waterloo region (I think of us as one center). The other 2 are Kik (out of Waterloo) and Wattpad, which is actually headquartered here in the St. Lawrence Market.
What’s exciting to me about all of this is that it’s further evidence of a growing and thriving Toronto/Waterloo startup ecosystem. And while to some it may not seem like a big deal for yet another mobile app to receive funding, it’s actually great news.
Because as these companies grow and become successful, they’ll not only create new jobs in the region, but also create a tremendous amount of wealth and expertise. And when this wealth and expertise gets reinvested into future startups, you end up with a powerful snowball effect. That’s how startup ecosystems are built.
It’s also great to see companies staying put, because the pull towards more established startup hubs can be significant. When my friend Evgeny raised a Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz last year, he told me that they asked him to move 500px down to California. As is the case with a lot of VCs, they like their portfolio companies to be nearby.
But ultimately 500px decided to stay headquartered here in downtown Toronto. And they did that for a few reasons: There’s lots of great engineering talent here and it usually comes at a discount relative to California (5-15%). He also finds that employees here are more loyal. There's less turnover. In California, everyone is looking for that next best startup to join. Here 500px gets to be that big fish in a small pond.
Anyways, a big congratulations to the Figure1 team. I hope they continue crushing it and that they stay put in Toronto. If you’re a healthcare professional, you can click here to download the app.
talking about the need for an all-day two-way urban rail service between Toronto and Waterloo.
The argument is that along this corridor sits a technology ecosystem that is second in size only to San Francisco-Silicon Valley and that current connectivity levels represent a missed opportunity of epic proportions. Presently this rail service will feed you into Toronto during the morning rush hour and take you back out in the evening rush hour. But that’s it.
According to this report prepared by the City of Kitchener (which is beside Waterloo), efficient train service would stitch together an ecosystem of approximately 12,800 technology companies, 2,800 startups, and 205,000 technology employees. It would also connect 6 universities and 4 colleges, many of which are ranked top in the world.
There’s an argument here that this is exactly the sort of thing that governments should be doing to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Rather than trying to be heavily involved in actual startups, they should be creating an environment that maximizes output and then getting out of the way.
talking about the need for an all-day two-way urban rail service between Toronto and Waterloo.
The argument is that along this corridor sits a technology ecosystem that is second in size only to San Francisco-Silicon Valley and that current connectivity levels represent a missed opportunity of epic proportions. Presently this rail service will feed you into Toronto during the morning rush hour and take you back out in the evening rush hour. But that’s it.
According to this report prepared by the City of Kitchener (which is beside Waterloo), efficient train service would stitch together an ecosystem of approximately 12,800 technology companies, 2,800 startups, and 205,000 technology employees. It would also connect 6 universities and 4 colleges, many of which are ranked top in the world.
There’s an argument here that this is exactly the sort of thing that governments should be doing to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Rather than trying to be heavily involved in actual startups, they should be creating an environment that maximizes output and then getting out of the way.
