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A "large city" named Megalopolis was founded in Greece in 371 B.C. to help defend the region called Arcadia against the city-state of Sparta. Though a stadium seating 20,000 was built there, indicating the city's impressive size for its time, Megalopolis today has only about 5,000 people. Social scientists now identify 10 megalopolises in the U.S., each with more than 10 million people. The one on the eastern seaboard that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., where the densely populated cities seem to flow into each other all along the coast, is now home to over 50 million people. But it's easily surpassed by the Japanese megalopolis that includes Tokyo, with more than 80 million inhabitants.

Examples of megalopolis in a Sentence

what was once a series of discrete towns interspersed with countryside is now one vast megalopolis

Recent Examples on the Web The financial megalopolis, home to 19 million people, is planning to eliminate or offset all carbon emissions by 2050, two decades ahead of India’s national goal. — Erika Page, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 May 2022 This has led to fears that while securing a future for the sinking megalopolis, Indonesian officials are sinking the future of one of the planet's most remarkable creatures. — CNN, 20 Feb. 2022 The Frida Cinema’s drive-in screening series continues with Katsuhiro Otomo’s dazzling 1988 anime fable set in the dystopian megalopolis of Neo-Tokyo. — Los Angeles Times, 10 Feb. 2022 At the north end of the Las Vegas Strip sits the $4.3 billion neon kaleidoscope that is the new Resorts World Las Vegas hotel-casino-restaurant megalopolis. — Richard Carlton Hacker, Robb Report, 5 Feb. 2022 And, of course, there are new places to stay in this ever-evolving megalopolis. — Jenna Scatena, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Dec. 2021 Thoreau came of age nearly 200 years ago, when the U.S. was still immensely undeveloped—even before most of the Northeast was dewilded in favor of the highways, railroads and subdivisions that make up today’s megalopolis. — Jordan Salama, Scientific American, 12 Oct. 2021 Cecil Penney was 16 years old when his community of Tack’s Beach, on an island in the middle of Placentia Bay, was relocated across the water to this small town, which to his eyes seemed like a megalopolis. — Sara Miller Llana, The Christian Science Monitor, 29 Sep. 2021 American and western troops on the ground in Kabul are surrounded by thousands of Taliban fighters in a megalopolis of 4.4 million, with the airport their only lifeline to the world. — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 19 Aug. 2021 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'megalopolis.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.