Abstract

North America’s Great Lakes Megaregion is an emerging urbanized area that is roughly co-existent with the Great Lakes watershed, which includes such traditional cities as Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto, as well as much of the so-called “rust belt” and is characterized by highly integrated energy flows, transportation infrastructures, and manufacturing systems that span the Canada–U.S.A. border. Research by the authors has identified a number of sheds—energy sheds, commodity sheds, mobility sheds—that describe the interrelated material and energetic flows as a complex ecology describing the geospatialization of each system. This paper extends the shed cartographies to the coupled areas of culture and tourism. An analysis is presented of both fixed locations (or nodes) of cultural production, and touristic flows within sub-, intra-, and extra-megaregional boundaries in order to apprehend a culture shed and a tourism shed for the region. In light of shifting and emerging trends in cultural and touristic participation, governmental and organizational goals for the development of the cultural and touristic markets in the megaregion, and the transformation of mobility infrastructures in a post-carbon future, the presentation concludes with a discussion of future possibilities for the form, organization and role of cultural and touristic infrastructures within the megaregion.