Chapter 4: Megalopolis

Megalopolis that stretches the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco is considered to be a western model of the original megalopolis on the east coast, which was termed the SanSan by French geographer Jean Gottman. The Oxford Dictionary of Geography defines the term as "any many-centered, multi-city, urban area of more than 10 million inhabitants, generally dominated by low-density settlement and complex networks of economic specialization."

There are a few reasons why San Francisco can be part of a megalopolis. Part of it because they have the San Francisco Bay which is easily navigate-able for ships, Port of San Francisco which has been considered a natural harbor, and the Bay is spanned by six bridges (Golden Gate, Bay Bridge, San Mateo Bridge, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and the Carquinez). With the Pacific Ocean as a route to Asia, the Bay Area has been a stop for freight liners to drop off their cargo.  The area is also linked to several major freeways, such as Interstate 5, US Route 101, California Route 99, and Interstate 80. 

   

The Northern California megaregion is home to the Silicon Valley with major corporations such as Cisco Systems, Apple Inc., Oracle, EBay, Yahoo!,Facebook, Youtube, Google, and Hewlett Packard, the San Francisco Financial District (headquarters of various financial firms such as VISA,Wells Fargo, and Union Bank of California), Wine Country, and much of the Central Valley which is one of the world's most productive agricultural areas, producing 8% of the nation's total crops. The centers of major national government offices, such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the U.S. Mint as well as the California State Capitol 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.

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanSan)