Deltas tend to have fertile soil, abundant water sources, and easy shipping, making it easy to feed large populations and form large cities with millions or even tens of millions of people. The top three cities in the United States (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) are not in the delta.
Many river deltas have large cities (the following is not exhaustive).
Yangtze River Delta: Shanghai.
Pearl River Delta: Guangzhou, Shenzhen.
(Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, delta accounts for 3 cities).
Nile Delta: Cairo (Africa's largest city) with a population of 22 million.
Ganges Delta: Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh), Kolkata (third largest city in India).
Indus River Delta: Karachi (the largest city in Pakistan) with a population of 17 million.
Mekong Delta: Ho Chi Minh City (the largest city in Vietnam) with a population of about 10 million.
The largest city in the Mississippi River Delta is called New Orleans, located at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
New Orleans is also well developed, but the city is small, with a population of only 1 million. Located at the mouth of the delta, New Orleans is a very average second-tier city in the United States.
Map of the Mississippi River Basin.
This large river basin covers an area of more than 3 million square kilometers, and New Orleans, as a port city, has a large hinterland, so why hasn't it developed into a first-tier city in the United States?
Cause. 1. Shipping hinterland.
Regardless of the Jialing River, the Han River, the Xiang River, and the Gan River, all the goods along the line had to be transported eastward to Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze River.
The actual hinterland of New Orleans is not as large as Shanghai, and it is divided into a large part by Chicago and New York. The upper Mississippi River is connected by canals (artificially dug rivers) that lead to Chicago, to the Great Lakes, and then to New York. Cargo from the middle reaches of the Mississippi River can also be reached via the Ohio River to New York (connected by a canal).
This means that the middle and upper reaches of the Mississippi River are actually the hinterland of New York and Chicago, and very few goods go south. Cargo from the lower Mississippi River only went to sea through the Port of New Orleans.
Reason 2: Location.
The Port of New Orleans is located on the Gulf of Mexico and across the Florida Strait to the Atlantic Ocean. New York and Boston face the Atlantic Ocean, are closer to Europe, and have closer contacts.
Reason 3: Flooding.
The Mississippi River Delta is relatively lagging in development and is also affected by natural disasters, especially hurricanes (the equivalent of typhoons).
After a hurricane, New Orleans is prone to flooding.
Such a place is not conducive to attracting investment (closed due to hurricanes at every turn, damage to fixed assets).
Reason 4: Cultural heritage.
The northern United States was first influenced by European culture, the industrialization process was earlier, and higher education also developed earlier, and it is more cultural than the southern United States. The South of the United States has long been a plantation economy, relying on black slave labor, and the development of civilization has lagged behind.
New York, Boston, Chicago and other northern metropolises all have top-ranked universities in the United States and even in the world, such as Harvard University and the University of Chicago. There is only one prestigious American university in the Mississippi River Delta, Tulane University, located in New Orleans, which many people may not have heard of.
Cultural heritage affects not only industry, education, but also tourism. There are many celebrity homes, museums, and memorials in the northern United States, which are all tourism resources. There aren't many places to visit in the Mississippi River Delta.
Due to the shipping hinterland, location, flooding, cultural heritage and other reasons, the Mississippi River Delta has not formed a first-tier city in the United States.