SanSan

The SanSan megalopolis is a name for a hypothetical chain of metropolitan areas in western California along the coast extending from San Francisco to San Diego. It would contain most of the population of California, with about two-thirds of the total population in the Greater Los Angeles area.

The name was coined, along with the equally obscure ChiPitts, in the 1961 book "Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States" by French geographer Jean Gottmann. While SanSan has not come into use—in part because there is not enough need to distinguish SanSan from California as a whole to spur the adoption of a new term—Gottmann's coinage of BosWash (the first and largest of the megalopolises) "has" gained some currency.

The Tehachapi Mountains are a natural boundary between Southern California and relatively sparsely populated Central California. The large rural areas between the two main poles of SanSan weaken the argument that they constitute one megalopolis.

Much recent urbanization in California has been not on the coast itself or even the first tier of coastal valleys, but closer to the midline of the state in the Central Valley, Antelope Valley, and Inland Empire, still within (long) commuting distance of the coastal cities.

[http://www.mi.vt.edu/uploads/megacensusreport.pdf Beyond Megalopolis] by Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, an attempt to update Gottmann's work with current trends, defines two megapolitan areas, each extending from California into Nevada, named NorCal and Southland after terms current in those areas, out of a total of ten such areas in the United States.

Metropolitan areas in SanSan

__NOTOC__
*San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont
*Santa Rosa–Petaluma
*Napa
*Vallejo–Fairfield
*Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville
*Stockton
*San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara
*Santa Cruz–Watsonville
*Modesto
*Merced
*Madera
*Fresno–Clovis
*Hanford–Corcoran
*Visalia-Porterville
*Bakersfield
*Salinas–Monterey
*San Luis Obispo–Paso Robles
*Santa Barbara–Santa Maria
*Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura
*Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana
*Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario
*San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos
*Yuba City

Important cities in SanSan

* Los Angeles (pop.3,694,820)
* San Diego (pop.1,223,400)
* San Jose (pop.928,821)
* San Francisco (pop.739,426)
* Fresno (pop.464,727)
* Long Beach (pop.461,522)
* Sacramento (pop.407,018)
* Oakland (pop.401,392)
* Santa Ana (pop.337,977)
* Anaheim (pop.328,014)
* Riverside (pop. 288,384)
* Stockton (pop.279,800)
* Bakersfield (pop.247,057)
* Palmdale (pop.145,468)
* Modesto (pop.206,300)
* Oxnard (pop.203,412)
* San Bernardino (pop.185,401)
* Chula Vista (pop.173,556)
* Irvine (pop.152,048)
* Salinas (pop.151,060)
* Pasadena (pop.133,936)
* Visalia (pop.107,555)
* Santa Barbara (pop.92,325)

ee also

* San Angeles
* BosWash
* ChiPitts
* Bajalta California
* Coastal California
* List of United States metropolitan areas

External links

* [http://geography.about.com/cs/urbansprawl/a/megalopolis.htm Megalopolis at about.com] - Makes a passing reference to SanSan