As of today, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and by 2050, this urban population will almost double in size, and 7 of 10 people in the world will live in cities. As cities have continued to grow and expand throughout history, a new vocabulary has also emerged, often to better communicate the scale of urban living in a relatively contemporary context. One such example is the term megalopolis – typically defined as a network of large cities that have been interconnected with surrounding metropolitan areas by infrastructure or transportation. In effect, it’s a region perceived as an encompassing urban area, within which there is a constant flow of commerce and migration.
Although the term megalopolis is often used interchangeably with megacities, it distinguishes itself from the latter, with megacities typically an urban agglomeration that includes the population living in the suburbs outside the established border of a single city. A megalopolis, on the other hand, usually results from the urban sprawl that occurs from the geographic proximity of metropolitan areas to each other.
