Knowledge Economy in the Megalopolis ─ Interactions of innovations in transport, information, production and organizations

This book documents the broader economic consequences of multimodal transport investments, in particular the nature and scope of economic evolution and structural changes over several decades along the dynamic Boston-Washington multimodal transport corridor in the United States, an area christened by Jean Gottmann as the Megalopolis.

The Megalopolis comprises some of the country’s oldest settled areas, the densest mega-urban region, comprising locales of both the earliest industrialization, and of the modern knowledge economy all in the light of a transport infrastructure that has been vital to the region’s success.

The authors outline the many economic mechanisms through which transport investments in highways and other modes support economic growth and development along transport corridors while highlighting additional economic structural change processes such as the switch to a service economy, the rise of globalization and the increased importance of spatial proximity.

T. R. Lakshmanan is Director of the Center for Transportation Studies at Boston University, USA

William P. Anderson is Ontario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Policy, founding director of the Cross-Border Transportation Studies Institute and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor, Canada. He is the author of Economic Geography, also published by Routledge

Yena Song is Research Fellow in Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton, UK