In 1968, I encountered an article that predicted that by the 21st century, most Americans would be living in three megalopolises—Boswash (Boston-Washington), Chipitz (Chicago-Pittsburgh) and Sansan (San Diego-Santa Rosa).
None of these panned out. Although the Washington, DC area has grown exponentially, the areas to the north don’t seem to have grown all that much—in fact, some of those areas are losing population.
Chipitz became the Rust Belt.
Sansan also never developed as was predicted. Instead, we have three smaller areas: Sansac (San Jose-Sacramento), OceanCity (Oceanside-National City) and Bantura (Banning-Ventura)—which can also be called Castamente (Castaic-San Clemente).
That depends on how you look at it. Thomas Jefferson would be surprised and appalled at how urban the New York to Philadelphia corridor (stretching out beyond those cities in both directions) is. What the futurologists missed was that most of the cities growth would be outside of the three megalopolises, but it was a great surprise for anyone who'd grown up earlier in the last century to see the first pictures from space.
