Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 01-26-2010, 05:48 PM
 
521 posts, read 1,308,365 times
Reputation: 330

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lifeshadower View Post

Operationalization - Defining Variables Into Measurable Factors
It makes more sense on an operationalization level. Any undergraduate research class would state that you would look at statistics much like you would a funnel; you start at a larger point of analysis, then you work inward. CSA's are the largest looking at metro areas, but not too large to encompass too much.
So howcome the Philly CSA does not include, say, Trenton MSA? Because Trenton is conveniently taken over by the New York City CSA, even though in terms of media market or even transportation (SEPTA Trenton line), Philly metro area easily reaches Trenton. Meanwhile, do a lot of people from Poughkeepsie really commute to or relate with NYC?

The problem with looking at CSAs for making such lists of who is prominent compared to whom, is that some metro areas unduly get short-changed.

In the case of Houston CSA, including towns like Huntsville (more than an hour and half away north on I-45) and Bay City (lord knows how far southwest of town...never been there in all my years of living in H-town!) to the CSA makes the geographical area even more humongous than it already is with Houston alone!

Boston's CSA includes Laconia...a town about 20 miles further north of Concord and not even on the major interstate connecting to Boston. I can understand inclduing Nashua in Boston's "ambit" of things-- people do commute from Nashua to Boston, even though it's quite a hell of a commute. Nashua is roughly 30 miles from Boston through a jungle of highways. But how is the case made to include not only Manchester (15 miles north of Nashua), Concord (10 miles north of Manchester), and also lil old Laconia (20 miles north of Concord). It's not even all back-to-back urbanized zone... past Nashua, you're still pretty much semi-rural countryside (whole of NH population is likely not much more than 1 million)...and Laconia is probably about half way to the Canadian border! lol


Compared to that, Philly and Trenton almost look like twin-cities, similar to Dallas-Ft Worth... which is another CSA that goes on for hundreds of square miles if not more.


I guess what I'm saying is that Philly metro is hemmed in as such, but even then, chunks of it have been arbitrarily taken off. You have Reading MSA but not Allentown MSA even though they're both about the same distance away from Philly, and Allentown is perhaps more readily connected via I-476. There is Vineland, NJ but not Atlantic City MSA even though it's connected to Philly by the main highway as well as direct train.

It just seems quite arbitrary.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 01-27-2010, 02:56 PM
 
7,845 posts, read 20,724,673 times
Reputation: 2851
Quote:
Originally Posted by a75206 View Post
So howcome the Philly CSA does not include, say, Trenton MSA? Because Trenton is conveniently taken over by the New York City CSA, even though in terms of media market or even transportation (SEPTA Trenton line), Philly metro area easily reaches Trenton. Meanwhile, do a lot of people from Poughkeepsie really commute to or relate with NYC?

The problem with looking at CSAs for making such lists of who is prominent compared to whom, is that some metro areas unduly get short-changed.

In the case of Houston CSA, including towns like Huntsville (more than an hour and half away north on I-45) and Bay City (lord knows how far southwest of town...never been there in all my years of living in H-town!) to the CSA makes the geographical area even more humongous than it already is with Houston alone!

Boston's CSA includes Laconia...a town about 20 miles further north of Concord and not even on the major interstate connecting to Boston. I can understand inclduing Nashua in Boston's "ambit" of things-- people do commute from Nashua to Boston, even though it's quite a hell of a commute. Nashua is roughly 30 miles from Boston through a jungle of highways. But how is the case made to include not only Manchester (15 miles north of Nashua), Concord (10 miles north of Manchester), and also lil old Laconia (20 miles north of Concord). It's not even all back-to-back urbanized zone... past Nashua, you're still pretty much semi-rural countryside (whole of NH population is likely not much more than 1 million)...and Laconia is probably about half way to the Canadian border! lol


Compared to that, Philly and Trenton almost look like twin-cities, similar to Dallas-Ft Worth... which is another CSA that goes on for hundreds of square miles if not more.


I guess what I'm saying is that Philly metro is hemmed in as such, but even then, chunks of it have been arbitrarily taken off. You have Reading MSA but not Allentown MSA even though they're both about the same distance away from Philly, and Allentown is perhaps more readily connected via I-476. There is Vineland, NJ but not Atlantic City MSA even though it's connected to Philly by the main highway as well as direct train.

It just seems quite arbitrary.
You make some valid points...but I have to disagree about the CSA criteria being arbitrary. The main reason CSA/MSA data is used for comparisons is because it isn't arbitrary - every CSA/MSA is decided by the same agency using the same criteria. Of course some situations are different, and I don't know enough about the Philadelphia Metro area to discuss it in detail so I certainly wouldn't argue with any of the points you make. But those areas you mentioned apparently don't meet the criteria for inclusion in the Philadelphia CSA. Every city has it's own unique set of circumstances, but as long as the same standards are applied then the outcome isn't arbitrary.

I guess CSA data does benefit some cities for comparison purposes. Several cities don't even have a CSA, and for many of those that do have one the CSA is only slightly larger than the MSA. For example, Atlanta's CSA population is 5.7 million, while it's MSA population is 5.4 million; on the flip side, Washington D.C.'s CSA population is 8.3 million, while it's MSA population is 5.4 million - a significant difference.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-09-2010, 04:03 PM
 
228 posts, read 395,301 times
Reputation: 98
Other cities' struggles highlight North Texas' appeal

[SIZE=2]08:15 AM CDT on Monday, March 15, 2010
By Cheryl Hall / The Dallas Morning News[/SIZE]
Economist Michael Cox has a slogan to suggest if you're trying to attract talented workers from either coast: Move here and get a free BMW.
It's not false advertising, says the former chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who's now at Southern Methodist University.
Most professionals working in the Northeast and California pay the equivalent of a year's worth of expensive car payments in annual personal income tax – which we don't have.
But we don't need an ad campaign to encourage immigration to North Texas.
Every year for the last three years, Dallas-Fort Worth has added a Little Rock to our population, Cox says. Maintain that annual increase of 165,000 for three years, and we will have "annexed" a San Jose, Calif., since 2007.
"Every six years, we add a million people," says Cox, who heads the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at SMU. "That's unbelievable. When they lose their jobs in Cleveland, they say, 'OK, let's pack up and move to Dallas.' "
If population trends continue, we'll replace Chicago as the third-largest metropolitan area in 20 years, if not sooner, Cox says.
Why here? Why now?

"The world has fallen in our lap," he says. "We're a service-based economy. We're perfectly poised for growth domestically. Now we have global growth through technology that enables us to be the 'it' economy."
Think of Texas as the target, attracting individuals and companies fleeing high taxes, faltering economies and sky-high costs. For every dollar a person or company makes in most of the Northeast or California, the state grabs about 10 cents in taxes. Texas lets you keep the full dollar.
Now think of Dallas-Fort Worth as the bull's-eye. More than any other Texas metro area, Dallas-Fort Worth has tied its future to foreign economies with large populations, fast-growing workforces and increasing wages.
For decades, we've been telling ourselves how smart we are to live here. We have hot weather. But we also have air conditioning.
"You don't have to shovel heat," says John Holt, chief executive of Dallas-based SWS Group's banking subsidiary, Southwest Securities FSB.
Cox developed a following during his 25 years at the Dallas Fed. For 10 of those, he was the chief economist guiding the bank's policy with his economic analysis.
With the help of others, Cox developed a critical index used by the entire Federal Reserve System. The "spaghetti index" tracks employment ups and downs in each of the 12 Fed districts.
"I would have preferred to have called it the Cox index, but others at the Fed thought it looked like a bowl of spaghetti," he says.
Since taking over as director of the O'Neil Center, Cox has spent two years crunching statistics, devising new formulas, reformulating old ones, and analyzing demographic and employment trends for a major presentation about D-FW as the "it" economy.
Using more than 100 slides, Cox sets out to prove that home and Oz are one and the same.
Tom Leppert has seen Cox's hourlong presentation and buys the thesis – which is natural since he's the mayor of Dallas. But he says he believed similar arguments when he moved here with the headquarters of Turner Corp. in late 1999. You know: central location, outstanding airport, low-cost economy, quality of life.
OK, we're a little short on oceans and mountains, says Leppert, who moved here from Hawaii. But from his experience, Dallas turned out to be a "hard-to-beat place" to run an international business and raise a family.
"All of the pieces have been here for years," Leppert says. "But our advantages have been magnified because other areas of the country have gone in the wrong direction."
Global economy

Forbesmagazine cites "tortuous commutes and nose-bleed-inducing taxes" as reasons why New York and Chicago made its just-released 2010 list of America's 20 most miserable cities. Philadelphia; Sacramento and Modesto, Calif.; Miami; and a host of economically hammered Midwestern cities also made the list.
So why is Dallas-Fort Worth coming into its own?
Globalization and technology, Cox says. We've developed the goods and services that the New Economy wants.
Although Houston has one more Fortune 500 company than D-FW, revenue from foreign sales by Houston's largest corporations was less than half of the $387.3 billion generated abroad by those based in North Texas in 2008.
For example, Texas Instruments Inc. sold nearly 90 percent of its products abroad. Foreign sales accounted for nearly half of everything Kimberly-Clark Corp. produced.
The thrust of the global economy for several decades will be powered by services, Cox predicts. Unlike energy-centric Houston, our diversified economy has created a diversified service sector.
The Internet allows professional, information technology and financial services to be traded around the world. And we have those.
D-FW interior designers, architects and engineering companies design royal palaces, resorts and even amusement parks in the Middle East, casinos in Macau, skyscrapers in Europe and manufacturing plants in China and India.
We're big in computer programming. We're home to global hedge funds.
Local bankers like Holt help customers do business around the world. Even though Southwest Securities is not a giant, he expects its foreign segment to expand as customers become more globally focused.
"You don't have to be big to be global," Cox says. "You just have to develop a global mindset. Once you do, you've got tremendous opportunity."
Diversity helps

Another advantage is D-FW's diversified population, which as of the last census included 265,000 Asians who help connect us with those growing parts of the world, he says.
Immigration from countries to our south is another plus, Cox says.
"At one end of the income distribution, they're building houses, taking care of our children, being our maids, providing lawn care, being police and firefighters. At the other, they're lawyers, bond dealers, business owners, professors.
"We need to celebrate our diversity."
The biggest challenge is improving education from pre-K through college if D-FW is to have the workforce required to fuel economic growth, he says.
"We have to embrace economic freedom. We need to remake our economy over and over again and not get stuck on one thing.
"We need to embrace globalization, look abroad for sales and resist policies to stop outsourcing.
"And the absolutely worst thing we could do as a state is to initiate income taxes."
Unbridled growth will stress roads, schools, health care and other services, says Al Niemi, SMU's business school dean. But those problems pale against the woes being experienced elsewhere.
Long term, our problems are likely to be environmental. Air quality and water could become serious issues as D-FW adds several million people, Niemi says.
And there's the specter of longer commute times. "We do not want to become the next Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-09-2010, 04:08 PM
 
Location: The City
22,379 posts, read 38,678,927 times
Reputation: 7974
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeaconJ View Post
You make some valid points...but I have to disagree about the CSA criteria being arbitrary. The main reason CSA/MSA data is used for comparisons is because it isn't arbitrary - every CSA/MSA is decided by the same agency using the same criteria. Of course some situations are different, and I don't know enough about the Philadelphia Metro area to discuss it in detail so I certainly wouldn't argue with any of the points you make. But those areas you mentioned apparently don't meet the criteria for inclusion in the Philadelphia CSA. Every city has it's own unique set of circumstances, but as long as the same standards are applied then the outcome isn't arbitrary.

I guess CSA data does benefit some cities for comparison purposes. Several cities don't even have a CSA, and for many of those that do have one the CSA is only slightly larger than the MSA. For example, Atlanta's CSA population is 5.7 million, while it's MSA population is 5.4 million; on the flip side, Washington D.C.'s CSA population is 8.3 million, while it's MSA population is 5.4 million - a significant difference.

Actually that is false, some meet (Trenton For example) CSA criteria for multiple metros, but this is beating a dead horse. In this case the allocation was arbitrary, a person in the OMB decided
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-09-2010, 06:30 PM
 
228 posts, read 395,301 times
Reputation: 98
I think the former chief economist at the Federal Reserve certainly makes a good case for ranking Dallas ahead of Houston.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-09-2010, 06:54 PM
 
2,419 posts, read 4,698,585 times
Reputation: 1317
D.C.(It "is" America)
NYC

LA
Chicago

Philly
SanFran
Boston
Houston
MIA
Seattle
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-09-2010, 08:06 PM
 
Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
10,138 posts, read 15,935,989 times
Reputation: 4047
In my opinion:
Top 01: New York City
Top 03: New York City, Los Angeles, & Chicago
Top 05: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, & San Francisco
Top 10: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, & Atlanta
Top 12: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, & Detroit
Top 15: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis, & Denver
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-10-2010, 08:28 AM
 
228 posts, read 395,301 times
Reputation: 98
Quote:
Originally Posted by Awesome Danny View Post
In my opinion:
Top 01: New York City
Top 03: New York City, Los Angeles, & Chicago
Top 05: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, & San Francisco
Top 10: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, & Atlanta
Top 12: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, & Detroit
Top 15: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis, & Denver
My local bias would rank Dallas above Houston, can't disagree with the rest.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-10-2010, 10:30 PM
 
Location: US Empire, Pac NW
5,004 posts, read 12,313,882 times
Reputation: 4125
I still think Seattle should rank in the top 5. It's biggest point would be Microsoft, you know, the company that revolutionized and accelerated the way we do business?

Nevermind it is a horrid, overglutted, soulless behemoth of a company that is probably going to have a massive implosion in the coming decades. That's the future, this is now, and Seattle (OK, actually Redmond, a suburb of Seattle) allowed it to grow.

Starbucks - practically invented the coffee culture in the ENTIRE USA, and pushed it WORLDWIDE. Yeah, that big. But then again, coffee is huge in Seattle. Probably because we don't get much sun in the winter.

Costco. Yep. HQ'ed here.

Boeing. You know, that airplane maker? Well, the company HQ isn't here anymore, but the HQ of commercial airplanes, THE #1 EXPORTER OF INDUSTRIAL GOODS OF THE USA, is based in Seattle (and Renton, and Kent, and Everett, and ... you get the idea).

Zymogenetics. You probably never heard of this company, but they pioneer drugs and pharmaceuticals. They recently got a buyout offer from Bristol-Meyes-Squibb

Cray, Inc. You know, makers of the Cray supercomputers?

Getty Images. Anyone in the press and reporting industry knows who they are and how respected they are.

A whole host of .com's, the most notable being Amazon.com, PayScale, RealNetworks, and Zillow.

Nordstrom and Tommy Bahama and Eddie Bauer


I could go on and on. Note the lack of financial services though ... used to be Washington Mutual, but they got raeped by the recession and got bought by Chase.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-10-2010, 10:42 PM
 
4,803 posts, read 10,131,349 times
Reputation: 2785
yawnnnnnnnn

same cities.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top