MEGALOPOLIS. Michael Jennings has a post about sports rivalries, different visions of football, and suburban sprawl. I hesitate to comment too much, and do not want to try Michael's patience with yet another transatlantic update fest. However: when it comes to defining megalopolises, "Manchester containing 2.5 million people and Liverpool 1.4 million. However, when if you look at their methodology, you would find that every town between Manchester and Liverpool is counted in one list or the other. That is, the whole area between the two cities is counted towards one or the other. If the two touch, then surely they should be counted as one agglomeration" is not unique. At 24 is Chicago (9.4 m) and at 219 is Milwaukee (1.7 m). I haven't looked at the algorithm to determine if the areas adjoin. By Michael's continuous development test (in the States, consider either congested expressways all the way, or traffic lights every mile or less on the local roads as an alternative) they do, and the people of Kenosha, Wisconsin, are politically with Milwaukee but commercially with Illinois. (You even find some Bear fans in Kenosha, and not a few Packer fans in Illinois. Man United? Give me the frozen tundra.)

A sidenote: on a trip from Liverpool to Manchester, I rode the train through Widnes and noticed some preserved streetcars (trams) near the station. Inquired, found out some information about the project, and learned that Widnes is the railway station where Paul Simon had a ticket for his destination and wrote a song about it.