who is credited with developing the concept of a 'megalopolis'
Megalopolis The term was used by Patrick Geddes in his 1915 book Cities in Evolution,[2][verification needed] 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.[3][4][5] The latter is sometimes called the "BosWash megalopolis".