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.
I do not want a debate here. Only facts. Please take the 2014 census estimates for your core city, and the county that it is in. Then divide it by the total MSA population. I am interested to see how many "core counties" still make up over half their MSA. Please keep this thread to MSAs over 1 million, or the top 50 or so cities.
I would like to then compile a list. I think this largely shows how decentralized a metro area is. For metros over 3 million, I think it shows they are more multimodal....ie, different centers of population. Dallas and Ft Worth are probably the easiest example.
The comparison breaks down out West
Lest do Phoenix.
Maricopa County is 9224 massive sq miles. But with 4.16 million in its core county, that is alot. with 4.57 in the metro, we get 91%.
Doesn't this depend on where in the county the core city is located though?
For example, this metric was done for Detroit, which is located in the northeastern corner of Wayne County, and the city limits border Oakland and Macomb counties. So wouldn't you expect some of the metro population to be in those counties as well?
For comparison sake 10.2 million people in 5k sq miles is still pretty darn significant. Less land area than Connecticut with almost 3x's the people.
And a lot of LA county is actually undeveloped mountains and desert, so you have a lot of people squeezed into even tighter spaces. Most people in LA County live in the LA Basin and its very densely packed.
This could be done easily for all 381 metro areas in Excel. But I'm not home now to use the spreadsheets and make the calculations. The thing is....metro areas can have more than one "central county."
And a lot of LA county is actually undeveloped mountains and desert, so you have a lot of people squeezed into even tighter spaces. Most people in LA County live in the LA Basin and its very densely packed.
Calison did a rough drawing of contiguous development for LA MSA (or maybe it was CSA?) and concluded that the majority of the population lives within 3,000 sq miles. Some of that includes parts of neighboring counties, but those lines are arbitrary considering continuous development.
Doesn't this depend on where in the county the core city is located though?
For example, this metric was done for Detroit, which is located in the northeastern corner of Wayne County, and the city limits border Oakland and Macomb counties. So wouldn't you expect some of the metro population to be in those counties as well?
It depends on a few things. Every borough of NYC is its own county, but a city like St. Louis isn't in a county because it's an independent city.
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.
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.
