Taken in its broadest sense, the Great Lakes region of North America is a binational Canadian–American region centered around the Great Lakes that includes eight US states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and the Canadian province of Ontario.
For our purposes here, we are examining the US region. It really is a notable player economically and in terms of population and urban centers. In the US the region cuts a wide swath from the twin cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul in Minnesota in the west, south to St Louis and Louisville, Kentucky, and east to Rochester, New York. Within this broad region, there is also a core area of more continual urban development that extends beyond the US border that includes Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, South Bend, Detroit-Windsor, Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and the metropolitan areas between these.
The America 2050 project identified 11 megaregions of the US, including the Great Lakes megalopolis.
According to the Brookings Institution, if it stood alone as a country, the economy of the Great Lakes region, which includes most of the Great Lakes megalopolis, would be one of the largest economic units in the world with a $4.5 trillion gross regional product, roughly equal to Japan’s. The five Great Lakes also contain one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water and have a combined shoreline of 10,210 miles (17,017 km). About 200 million tons of cargo are shipped through the Great Lakes each year.
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