The rise of the mega-region

Derived from the Greek and meaning “very large city,” the term was later applied to a number of other regions: the great swath of California stretching from San Francisco to San Diego; the vast Midwestern megalopolis running from Chicago through Detroit and Cleveland and down to Pittsburgh; and the bustling Tokyo-Osaka region of Japan. [...] Retsinas (2007) describes the problems stemming from developing world mega-cities in terms of poverty, diseases and despair in many of the fastest growing regions in the world, comparing those with the problems related to the urbanization process during the industrial revolution as experienced by Dickens and Marx. [...] After we determine the threshold that gives the best approximation of the established US mega-regions, we apply this same threshold to the nighttime lights dataset for the rest of the world. [...] The top 20 mega-regions in terms of economic activity account for 10 percent of population, 56.6 percent of economic activity, 76 percent of patented innovations and 76.5 percent of the most-cited scientists. [...] And the top 40 mega-regions in economic activity, which make up about 17.7 percent of the world's population, produce 66 percent of economic activity, 85.6 percent of patented innovations, and 83.3 percent of the most-cited scientists.