Megaregions and COVID-19: a call for an innovative governing structure in the United States

ABSTRACT

In the United States, megaregions, which are networks of urban centres and their hinterlands, have a greater prevalence of COVID-19, but have been overlooked as a geographical unit for multi-jurisdictional governance for pandemic response. Existing multi-metropolitan planning organization (MPO) collaborations and state-level COVID-19 coalitions in the United States demonstrate the utility of the megaregion as an effective framework for regional collaboration and operations. Using multilevel modelling, we explore the significance of megaregions in explaining disease occurrence. The results suggest that the megaregion can be an appropriate geographical scale for multi-jurisdictional operations, governance and pandemic response.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• megaregions
• multi-jurisdictional governance
• multilevel modelling

JEL:

• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank the reviewers and the editor for their help with this paper.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.