i don't know man, there's a lot of ruralness between here and seattle. i can't really see that reasonably happening. i hope it doesn't.

Posted by: matt at November 1, 2005 12:16 PM

no!
interesting thought, but god no.
also, i don't think beaverton could be considered an edge city. maybe i'm getting my urban planning terms mixed up here.
i did go to some weird activist meetings last winter about our region breaking off & forming 'cascadia'. this is hardly what those kids had in mind, though.
& finally, seattle already has enough sprawl from olympia to everett to last them a good 25 years of filling in.

Posted by: jshua at November 1, 2005 3:21 PM

2030?!!?! can i get some of whatever he's smoking?

in order to accomplish that in a mere 25 years, we'd have to find the 21st century equivalent of a gold rush and destroy all of our land use laws in order to fill the vast expanse, and radically remake our farming/transportation/waste management infrastructures... and we're not even bringing up how much oil costs are going up in the next two decades.

the only similar precedent i could think of is the san jose/san francisco growth that created the silicon valley, and even then, we don't refer to the bay area as "megapolitan".

Posted by: wise at November 1, 2005 3:51 PM

Well, the article says, "As America makes room for 70 million more people during the next two decades, these supercities represent the biggest long-term business opportunities since the end of World War II."

But also mentions, "In more congested suburban metro areas -- like the northern Virginia towns enveloping Washington, or the exurbs of Chicago -- rising fuel costs and long commutes are killing the appetite for more bulldozing of raw land. Many people who bought a McMansion an hour away from the office when gas cost less than $2 a gallon are already downsizing."

I don't think we're talking about full downtown density from here to Seattle, I think it's just more suburban development, and he's probably a little ambitious.

Posted by: Mikey at November 1, 2005 6:07 PM

He is probably just trying to coin the term "megapolitan."

Posted by: Andrew at November 1, 2005 9:35 PM

andrew: yes!

mikey: i was wrong about edge cities. beaverton is the definition of the term:

edge cities, term designating commercial complexes that have grown up on the margins of large American cities, a development that dates mainly from the 1970s. The term was coined by Joel Garreau in his book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (1991). Sometimes called “technoburbs,” edge cities typically develop at the intersection of major highways and feature the amenities that serve large suburban populations in such locations—shopping malls, entertainment centers, hospitals, schools, regional airports, and the like. These settings have proved attractive to businesses for corporate headquarters, which are often sited on appealingly sylvan “campuses,” and for office buildings that can house smaller companies. With convenient access and pleasant surroundings, edge cities avoid many inner-city problems. However, critics have noted in them marked class segregation and a diminished sense of community as well as, increasingly, such traditional urban ills as congestion and crime.

Posted by: jshua at November 1, 2005 10:18 PM

Well, I wasn't to into the idea of a "megapolitan" but then I noticed that every city gets a space needle!

Posted by: Robin at December 14, 2006 4:29 PM