Converging Megalopolis!

One of the things that stood out in Brooks’ last column was his remark about the habitat of Patio Man, which included “the converging megalopolis between Albuquerque and Santa Fe,” which caught my attention since most of the area between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is fifty-odd miles of sagebrush desert and wilderness that I have traversed by car more times than I care to remember.  It’s true that our northern villages/suburbs cut down on some of that distance, and there is always Bernalillo in between them, but Albuquerque and Santa Fe are a “converging megalopolis” in the same way that Oklahoma City and Tulsa have become a massive conurbation or in the same way that we are seeing the emergence of the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa metro area.  Albuquerque and Santa Fe are the two largest cities in the state, and there is a fair number of commuters between the two places, but they are as non-converging a pair of cities as you could want.