Tag Archives: geography

The Crossing and the Island: Megaregions of Southeast Asia — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. Two Questions in One Region Southeast Asia holds roughly 690 million people across eleven states, and it divides analytically into two halves that pose opposite questions. The mainland — Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and peninsular Malaysia — is … Continue reading →

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The Saturated Quarter: Megaregions of Central and South Asia — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. Where the Concept Is Both Obvious and Useless Central and South Asia hold roughly 2.1 billion people — about a quarter of humanity — on land area smaller than Brazil and Argentina combined. By any measure of scale, this … Continue reading →

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The Region Ahead of Its Data: Megaregions of Sub-Saharan Africa — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 6, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. A Different Kind of Question Every previous paper in this series has asked what a region’s megaregions are. For Sub-Saharan Africa the honest question is what they are becoming, and that changes the character of the analysis in ways … Continue reading →

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The Habitable Fraction: Megaregions of the Middle East and North Africa — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 6, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. What This Region Tests Five papers have accumulated a framework by testing it against different structural conditions: coalescence in North America, primacy in South America, water and small size in the Caribbean, distance in Oceania, and legal permeability in … Continue reading →

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The Permeable Continent: Megaregions of Europe — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 6, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Other Origin The megaregion has two intellectual parents, and only one of them was American. Gottmann described the Northeastern seaboard in 1961 and gave the phenomenon its first name. But the European tradition ran in parallel and, in … Continue reading →

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The Long Distances: Megaregions of Oceania — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 5, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Question Oceania Answers Each region in this series has tested the megaregion concept against a different structural condition. North America supplied the case the concept was built for. South America tested it against primacy. The Caribbean tested it … Continue reading →

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The Sea Between: Megaregions of the Caribbean — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 5, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Short Answer, and Why It Is Not the End of the Matter On the strict test, the Caribbean has no megaregions. The test requires either a coalescence of adjacent metropolitan labor markets or a transactional corridor joining several … Continue reading →

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The Primate Continent: Megaregions of South America — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology

Posted on August 5, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. Why the Category Travels Badly The megaregion concept was built in and for North America and Northwest Europe. It presumes a particular starting condition: several cities of roughly comparable weight, historically independent, growing until their commuting fields overlap. Gottmann’s … Continue reading →

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The Continental Lattice: Megaregions of North America — Span, Cohesion, and a Working Typology: A White Paper

Posted on August 3, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. The Problem of the Unit North American settlement is routinely described at two scales and governed at a third. Analysts speak of metropolitan areas — the commuting-defined statistical units that agencies in all three countries produce — and of … Continue reading →

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Synthesis: Four Centuries of a Contested Coast

Posted on July 19, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This concluding paper draws together the arguments of the preceding nine and advances an interpretation of the whole. It proposes that the military history of Tampa Bay passed through three phases—the bay as beachhead, as staging area, and finally … Continue reading →

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