Seems like a pretty vacuous article if “megaregions” are so poorly defined. Anyone who has ever driven between Spokane and Portland or Seattle knows it could hardly be considered “mega”.
I think the consensus is that the Portland-Seattle-Vancouver corridor is the "real" megaregion of the PNW. That corridor has ~10 million people and a high per capita GDP, especially the middle part which kind of ties it together.
If you were going to include Spokane, it isn't that much of a stretch to include Boise as well.
Yea, that makes sense. I think you can conceivably define a megaregion to include places like the PNW corridor, the bay area, research triangle, etc. I'm just a bit baffled how Spokane and the region between makes the cut. Seems like the author just wanted to draw a bigger circle.
Some of these megaregions really are "kind of one thing" like Southern California, others are pretty separated. Spokane is close to Seattle and Portland so there's traffic there, but I don't know they really operate as one "region".
