The Territorial City: Edge of Megalopolis Every foreground has a background. In California, our background is the Central Valley-a flat landscape that is used to harvest and extract resources to support other regions. It is no surprise that within the State, the greatest political, economic, and cultural divide manifests itself between coastline and the inland valley. Coastal California adorns an image of scenic landscape, progressive environmental movements, liberal culture, and density, while inland California is characterized by resource harvesting and extraction, conservative values, and a depravity in social infrastructure. Separated by topography, wealth, race, climate, and pollution, these two California's are emblematic of the increasing divide between the realities of resource consumption and the exploitation of land and communities to extract these resources. While these two Californias have remained distinct, the construction of the high-speed rail infrastructure will produce a spatial collapse between these two worlds, and create a new world of its own-a territorial city.

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