Claim: Northeast megalopolis includes Boston.

A megalopolis -LRB- sometimes called a megapolis ; also megaregion , or supercity -RRB- is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas . The term was used by Patrick Geddes in his 1915 book Cities in Evolution , by Oswald Spengler in his 1918 book The Decline of the West , and Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book The Culture of Cities , which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and social decline . Later , it was used by Jean Gottmann in his landmark 1961 study , Megalopolis : The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States , to describe the chain of metropolitan areas along the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. extending from Boston , Massachusetts , through New York City , Philadelphia , Baltimore , and ending in Washington , D.C. and Northern Virginia . The latter is sometimes called the `` BosWash megalopolis '' .