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There is no perfect metric, but, excluding the Bay and the Research Triangle, CSAs are way more ridiculous than MSAs. "Los Angeles" stretches to the Nevada border? Allentown, PA is a part of metropolitan "New York"? CSAs are the most inflated and inconsistent metric of them all--urban area (whether from the UN, Demographia or the Census) is far better, as is MSA.
Nice try!! But it's kind of weird that you criticize the LA CSA for being too broad without criticizing the Riverside
MSA for being too broad when the Riverside MSA is the reason the LA CSA is so broad. And if you know anything about the NY area, it's not surprising that Allentown is a part of the NY CSA. Matter of fact, if NY and Allentown were in the same state, it's very possible they would be in the same MSA, even at 90 miles apart.
Nice try!! But it's kind of weird that you criticize the LA CSA for being too broad without criticizing the Riverside
MSA for being too broad when the Riverside MSA is the reason the LA CSA is so broad. And if you know anything about the NY area, it's not surprising that Allentown is a part of the NY CSA. Matter of fact, if NY and Allentown were in the same state, it's very possible they would be in the same MSA, even at 90 miles apart.
Location: Watching half my country turn into Gilead
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the resident09
Actually in regards to MSA's i believe that isn't true.
At least with CSA's we know that numbers will be inflated, even if we're talking LA or NY. We at least know its consistent that you will see some over counting in a region no matter where.
However with MSA's there is much more inconsistency. In certain MSA's you will get an over count of true population and density, and in others you will get an under count of the true breadth and scope of the metro region.
Philadelphia, DC, and SF all have MSA numbers smaller than would be reflected if they were in other parts of the country, and all are 5,500 sq mi or less.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Felt38
A few comments on this
1. I am OK with LA extending so far as the area in question (San Bernadino county, I believe) is sparsely populated and the vast majority of people living in that county actually live in what we would consider to be the urban agglomeration of LA. In the case of Houston or Boise or many other CSAs, the area several tens of thousands of square miles, but the extra land does not really change the population too much. The vast majority of the population is in the actual urban part of those cities.
2. I definitely agree with the problem of adding on places like Allentown to NYC or Stockton to the Bay Area. This issue seemed to be more endemic to the most recent definition of CSAs, but I assume it is due to commuting patterns.
3. I am not sold yet that UAs are the best metric. My impression is that the densities used to define an urban area, particularly by the UN, are more characteristic to old word city densities. North and South American cities are more spread out however this is due to being newer and developed with modern transportation in mind. I believe that UAs still keep Baltimore and Washington as separate entities, so like a previous poster said, they do not seem to improve a lot over MSAs and tend to underestimate, sometimes significantly, actual populations of US urban agglomerations.
Well articulated and I agree with your first two points, though your first point illustrates how CSAs/MSAs can grossly overreach, due to being based at the county level.
As for your third paragraph, yes, the metric does not favor newer developed cities. But that isn't necessarily correlated with just North and South American cities. Moscow, Dubai, Sydney, and Berlin are all not particularly dense by world standards. MSAs are better at defining labor markets than Urban Areas, in which disparate labor markets that have grown together are purposely kept separate in Urban Area definitions (DC/Baltimore, NYC/Philly, Pearl River Delta, etc.). From Demographia:
"In some cases, urban areas have virtually grown together, yet are still considered separate urban areas.
This report confines urban areas to a single metropolitan area (below) or labor market area. Continuous
urbanization that extends beyond individual labor markets (metropolitan areas) can be called "urban
extents."
What constitutes a particular metropolitan area is a matter of judgment and there are no generally accepted
international principles for delineating metropolitan areas (unlike urban areas). However, it is necessary to
“draw a line,” especially where adjacent urban areas have “grown together,” but remain essentially distinct
labor markets."
UAs aren't perfect, but I'm not yet sold that Baltimore and DC are "one entity", as an MSA would suggest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parhe
UAs are pretty much a worse version of MSAs. I mean, they desperate Denton and Lewisville from Dallas, that makes no sense.
Huh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pontiac51
Nice try!! But it's kind of weird that you criticize the LA CSA for being too broad without criticizing the Riverside
MSA for being too broad when the Riverside MSA is the reason the LA CSA is so broad. And if you know anything about the NY area, it's not surprising that Allentown is a part of the NY CSA. Matter of fact, if NY and Allentown were in the same state, it's very possible they would be in the same MSA, even at 90 miles apart.
Allentown is far more linked with Philadelphia than NYC; it's not even included in the "Tri-State" Area's broadcasts, but it is in Philadelphia's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair
LA gets a bad rap but the drive from the tip of Long Island to the NJ/PA border(I-78) is 198 miles.
And the drive from Ventura, CA to Needles, CA is 315 miles.
I'm most interested in Houston. Last year strong growth numbers were posted even though the oil bust was happening. People said that was because of a lag effect and numbers this year should be lower. I wonder if they are correct.
Houston grows 100,000 off of immigration and natural increase alone, which are trends that remain in place regardless of what oil prices are at any given time. Makes sense, Greater Houston has the third lowest median age among all MSAs over 1 million people (only Austin and Salt Lake City are younger) and due to being in a state with proximity to the border as well as having one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in North America, the immigration remains constant in good times and bad. Oil can crash to $15 a barrel and the immigration and natural increase would stay the same.
The expectation for Houston is that it has cooled off from two consecutive years of 160,000 people per year to something more realistic like 110,000 people per year or 120,000 people per year, still sterling numbers in the grand scheme of things, but a far from from where it was in 2014 (159,000) and 2015 (165,000). Houston isn't the price of a Boston or a Honolulu or something, so it wont see negative domestic migration, especially since employment gains never went into the negatives year-over-year and have gradually improved each year the city has moved further away from the oil bust.
I'm not curious on Houston at all. I know exactly what to expect from it. I'm most curious about the metropolitan areas that are in states that posted declining populations. I want to see how they end up and whether they were the reasons the state declined in general or they were the exceptions to the overall statewide rule. 2016 results were odd in the sense that an abnormal amount of American states posted a declining population, really abnormal amount. You have to think a lot of that is driven by major population centers posting a population decline as well. We'll see in about a week, to slightly longer than a week.
There is no perfect metric, but, excluding the Bay and the Research Triangle, CSAs are way more ridiculous than MSAs. "Los Angeles" stretches to the Nevada border? Allentown, PA is a part of metropolitan "New York"? CSAs are the most inflated and inconsistent metric of them all--urban area (whether from the UN, Demographia or the Census) is far better, as is MSA.
Many times MSAs are inflated as well when compared to their Urban Areas. It's not just CSAs. I've had several exhaustive conversations about this topic when comparing 2 areas with each other. Some MSAs and CSAs have significant population discrepancy from their singular or multiple UA populations while others do not.
Apologies, I mean't *separate. Denton and Lewisville are suburbs of Dallas.** There is continuous build between Denton and Dallas, through Lewisville and Carrollton, with thousands of commuters going back and forth between the two every day.
**except possibly culturally for Denton, according to some CD posters, but the same is true for Fort Worth, which is in the same UA.
Location: Watching half my country turn into Gilead
3,530 posts, read 4,171,933 times
Reputation: 2925
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parhe
Apologies, I mean't *separate. Denton and Lewisville are suburbs of Dallas.** There is continuous build between Denton and Dallas, through Lewisville and Carrollton, with thousands of commuters going back and forth between the two every day.
**except possibly culturally for Denton, according to some CD posters, but the same is true for Fort Worth, which is in the same UA.
Except Denton *is* included in the Dallas UA. Read page 9.
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Last edited by Yac; 04-05-2017 at 06:24 AM..
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