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California's major urban areas normally are thought of as two large megalopolises: one in
Northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...
(with 12.6 million inhabitants) and one in
Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
(with 23.8 million inhabitants), separated from each other by approximately 382 miles or 615 km (the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco), with sparsely inhabited (relatively) Central Coast, Central Valley, and
Transverse Ranges The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of Southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie within Santa Ba ...
in between. Other ideas conceive of a single megalopolis encompassing both North and South, or a division of
Coastal California Coastal California, also known as the California Coastline and the Golden Coast, refers to the coastal regions of the U.S. state of California. The term is not primarily geographical as it also describes an area distinguished by cultural, economic ...
vs. Inland California. These regional concepts are usually based on geographic, cultural, political, and environmental differences, rather than transportation and infrastructure connectivity and boundaries.


Notable conceptions

"Beyond Megalopolis", by
Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...
's Metropolitan Institute, defines two megapolitan areas which extend from California into Nevada: NorCal, which includes the
Reno, Nevada Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County, Nevada, Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, ...
area, and the Southland which encompasses Greater Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, and San Diego and includes Metropolitan Las Vegas. America 2050, an organization sponsored by the Rockefeller and
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...
s, lists 11 megaregions in the United States and Canada. This includes the Southern and Northern California megaregions in which Southern California includes
Greater Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the eas ...
,
San Diego–Tijuana San Diego–Tijuana is an international transborder agglomeration, straddling the border of the adjacent North America, North American coastal cities of San Diego, California, United States, and Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The 2020 popula ...
, the
Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...
and
Las Vegas Valley The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the Southern Nevada, southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan St ...
.
Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...
s
Herman Kahn Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence ...
and Anthony Wiener coined the name SanSan to refer to "a Pacific megalopolis that would presumably stretch initially from San Diego to Santa Barbara, and ultimately from San Francisco to Santa Barbara" (along with other megalopolises BosWash and Chipitts) in ''The Year 2000''. The notion of a megalopolis stretching from San Diego to Santa Barbara corresponds to the conventional notion of a Southern California megalopolis. But the prediction that there would ultimately be a Pacific megalopolis stretching all the way from San Diego to San Francisco, joining Southern and Northern California along the coast, does not conform to subsequent growth patterns, which instead extend inland to Metropolitan Sacramento and the
Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...
.


Northern California

Northern California holds 21 counties that are part of metropolitan areas, including one in Nevada, and includes an additional 17 neighboring counties and 4 Nevada counties in the sphere of influence. Currently, all three of the metropolitan regions of Northern California (Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, and Metropolitan Fresno) are connected but are separated from Greater Los Angeles with Kings, Tulare, and Kern Counties at the narrowest gap. However, one of metropolitan regions of each part of the state borders one of the two metropolitan regions of Nevada, Sacramento bordering Reno and Greater Los Angeles bordering Las Vegas. California's economy as a whole is the largest of any state in the United States and is the fourth largest economy in the world. The Northern California megaregion is home to the
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
with major corporations such as
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...
,
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
,
Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...
,
EBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
,
Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...
,
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
,
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
,
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, and
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
, the San Francisco Financial District (home to headquarters of various financial and business firms such as
VISA Visa most commonly refers to: * Travel visa, a document that allows entry to a foreign country * Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Vi ...
,
Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with a significant global presence. The company operates in 35 countries and serves over 70 million customers worldwide. It is a systemically important fi ...
, and
Union Bank of California Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Union ...
and is the largest financial district outside New York City),
Wine Country Wine Country is a region of California, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, known worldwide as a premier wine-growing region. The region is famed for its wineries, its cuisine, Michelin star restaurants, boutique hotels, luxury resorts ...
, and much of the Central Valley, which is one of the world's most productive agricultural areas, producing 8% of the nation's crops. The centers of major national government offices, such as the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts for the following federal judicial districts: * Distric ...
, the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (informally referred to as the San Francisco Fed) is the Federal Reserve, federal bank for the twelfth district in the United States. The twelfth district is made up of nine western U.S. state, states— ...
, and the
U.S. Mint The United States Mint is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury responsible for producing coinage for the United States to conduct its trade and commerce, as well as controlling the movement of bullion. The U.S. Mint is one of two U.S. age ...
, as well as the
California State Capitol The California State Capitol is the seat of the California state government, located in Sacramento, the state capital of California. The building houses the chambers of the California State Legislature, made up of the Assembly and the Senat ...
and the
California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sac ...
are all located within the region. The Bay Area also has the largest concentration of multi-millionaire households of any metropolitan area in the country and the largest concentration of billionaires of any U.S. metropolitan area, almost more than the next three metropolitan areas combined.


Southern California

Southern California holds the eight counties and municipalities of Greater Los Angeles, Inland Empire, and San Diego-Tijuana. Kern County and two Nevada counties are within the sphere of influence of Greater Los Angeles, while Imperial County and Mexicali Municipality are within San Diego-Tijuana's sphere of influence. The transnational Southern California megaregion is also a very important economic center in the U.S., and indeed also in Mexico, as it includes
Tijuana Tijuana is the most populous city of the Mexican state of Baja California, located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. Tijuana is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality, the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area and the most popu ...
, Mexico. Southern California is home to the
Port of Los Angeles The Port of Los Angeles is a seaport managed by the Los Angeles Harbor Department, a unit of the Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles. It occupies of land and water with of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. Promoted as "Amer ...
and
Port of Long Beach The Port of Long Beach, administered as the Harbor Department of the City of Long Beach, is a container port in the United States, which adjoins Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for US–Asian trade, the port occupies of land wi ...
(the first and second busiest container ports in the U.S. respectively) and the
Port of San Diego The Port of San Diego is a seaport in San Diego, California. It is located on San Diego Bay in southwestern San Diego County, and is a self-supporting district established in 1962 by an act of the California State Legislature. In addition to por ...
.''"North American Port Container Traffic - 2006"''
- Port Industry Statistics -
American Association of Port Authorities The American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) is a Industry trade group, trade association founded in 1912 that represents 150 port authority, port authorities in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, an ...
(AAPA) - Updated May 14, 2007 - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document)
The global center of the entertainment business, Southern California leads the world in the
motion picture A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since ...
,
television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
, and
recorded music Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording t ...
industry and is the home base for
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...
, with studios such as
The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...
,
ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...
,
Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment (theatrical motion pictures, television programs, and rec ...
,
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
,
Universal Studios Universal Studios may refer to: * Universal Studios, Inc., an American media and entertainment conglomerate ** Universal Pictures, an American film studio ** Universal Studios Lot, a film and television studio complex * Various theme parks operat ...
,
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...
,
Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
, and
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film studio, film production and Film distributor, distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the ...
headquartered here. Corporations such as
Fox Sports Net Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by the Walt Disney Company on Mar ...
,
Guess Guessing is the act of drawing a swift conclusion, called a guess, from data directly at hand, which is then held as probable or tentative, while the person making the guess (the guesser) admittedly lacks material for a greater degree of certaint ...
,
In-n-Out Burger In-N-Out Burgers, doing business as In-N-Out Burger, is an American regional chain of fast food restaurants with locations primarily in California and to a lesser extent the Southwest from Oregon to Texas. It was founded in Baldwin Park, Ca ...
,
ARCO Arco may refer to: Places * Arco, Trentino, a town in Trentino, Italy * Arco, Idaho, in the United States * Arco, Minnesota, a city in the United States * ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California, home of the Sacramento Kings Companies * ARCO (b ...
,
Farmers A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mi ...
, and many financial and banking companies are also based in the region. Southern California has long been the leading region in the U.S. for aviation and aerospace, and is one of the top five regions in the U.S. for the high-technology industry. Southern California is also one of the world's largest tourist industries thanks to its famous beaches, entertainment districts such as
L.A. Live L.A. Live is an entertainment complex in the South Park District of downtown Los Angeles, California. It is adjacent to the Crypto.com Arena and the Los Angeles Convention Center. L.A. Live was developed by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG ...
and
Sunset Boulevard Sunset Boulevard is a boulevard in the central and western part of Los Angeles, California, United States, that stretches from the Pacific Coast Highway (California), Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, Pacific Palisad ...
, and theme parks including
Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...
,
Knott's Berry Farm Knott's Berry Farm is a amusement park in Buena Park, California, United States, owned and operated by Six Flags. In March 2015, it was ranked as the List of amusement park rankings#North America, twelfth-most-visited theme park in North Ameri ...
, and
Universal Studios Hollywood Universal Studios Hollywood is a film studio and Amusement park, theme park located in Universal City, California, near Hollywood, Los Angeles. It is one of the oldest and most famous Hollywood film studios still in use. Its official marketin ...
.
San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...
is an important port city, industrial, commercial, and shipbuilding center. It has a flourishing tourism industry, many research institutions, a large biomedical/biotechnology industry, and it is home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. military bases and personnel of any large American city.
Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...
is the largest city in
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
, the world's second largest gambling/gaming center after
Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
, and one of the fastest growing large cities and metropolitan areas in the United States.


Coastal and Inland California

The vast, relatively sparsely populated area of
Central California Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the U.S. state of California, north of Southern California (which includes Los Angeles and San Diego) and south of Northern California (which includes San Francisco and San Jose, ...
weakens the proposal that California constitutes a single megalopolis. The northern and southern regions continue to grow toward one another, however, with much of this recent urbanization occurring not along the expensive and crowded coast itself – or even along the somewhat developed first tier of interior coastal valleys – but farther inland along a north–south axis through the midsection of the state in the Central Valley,
Antelope Valley The Antelope Valley is a valley primarily located in northern Los Angeles County, California, United States and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, Kern County, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated ...
,
Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...
and
San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; Spanish language in California, Spanish: ''Valle de San Joaquín'') is the southern half of California's Central Valley (California), Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an importa ...
regions, all comparatively more affordable areas which are becoming increasingly suburbanized as they are within commuting distance (albeit often a long commute) of the state's major coastal cities.


See also

*
Conurbation A conurbation is a region consisting of a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most ...
*
Megalopolis (city type) A megalopolis () or a supercity, also called a megaregion, is a group of metropolitan areas which are perceived as a continuous urban area through common systems of transport, economy, resources, ecology, and so on. They are integrated enough ...
*
Megaregions of the United States The megaregions of the United States are eleven regions of the United States that contain two or more roughly adjacent urban metropolitan areas that, through commonality of systems, including transportation, economies, resources, and ecologies ...
*
Urban agglomeration An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbani ...


References


External links


Megalopolis at about.com


* ttp://check-distance.com/route/los-angeles-ca/san-francisco-ca Distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco {{California *