Buffalo-Syracuse-Rochester area question

[cheese9988]

Originally Posted by bellafinzi

Syracuse is as much a dead town as Buffalo and Rochester. The Rochester area just looks a whole lot better than Syracuse for two reasons. The Rochester area grew 100,000 people in the last 40 years. While the Buffalo and Syracuse areas lost population during that time. The Syracuse area remained mostly stagnant in population, but the Buffalo area lost over 200,000 people. In the past 10 years the Rochester area has joined the other two metros and is now losing population. The other reason is that leadership and residents in the Rochester area focus on selling Rochester to the outside world, Syracuse is more insular and hasn't focused on that enough.

The following is my opinion.

Syracuse is like the beautiful girl who wears out of style clothing and no make-up. She might make a great wife, but most guys never approach her because of the way she looks. All she needs is a little direction from a more worldly minded person to show her how to dress and put on make-up. Then she's start turning heads and start attracting more guys.

Meaning if the Syracuse leadership and residents focused more on how the area looks then more people be drawn to live there.

Rochester is like a beautiful girl that wears mostly stylish clothing and puts on make-up everyday. She might make a great wife but since she is focused on more superficial things, she is slightly shallower and ends up attracting more worldly-minded guys.

Though the Syracuse girl is more down to earth than the Rochester girl, most guys are drawn to the Rochester girl based on first impressions.

Others can figure out how Buffalo is....

I'm not sure what you are looking for exactly in a town, but I'll make a few assumptions based on what you said.

The following is based on generalizations for the whole areas.

Most attractive: Rochester
Least crime: Syracuse
Best economy over the past 40 years: Rochester
Best economy now: Syracuse:
Most young people: Rochester
Most hilly: Syracuse
Closest to Canada: Buffalo
Most snow: Syracuse
Least number of cloudy days: Rochester
Most down to earth people: Syracuse

About the people. All of Upstate NY have very nice down to earth people in general. But I've found that people in Rochester and Buffalo have a slight "Midwestern niceness" unlike of what you find in the Syracuse area. They are just a tad more superficial in my opinion. I haven't heard this anywhere else but based on my limited observations I believe young men in Buffalo and Rochester are more...hmmmm...how should I say this...aggressive than in the Syracuse area. People in the Syracuse area are more laid back. And maybe that's why Syracuse doesn't look as good as Rochester.

Just to add a tad bit to that. The ONLY reason Rochester is doing better is the optical industry, Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, etc. Even though the industry declined, smaller business were spun off and other corporations came in and either bought out some of Kodaks assets or used them for new business of their own.

When you get down into growth/decline of 2% or less, with smaller populations the figures start to get very VERY unreliable, even when using a recent census. With some of the data that I have looked up, the approximate error within the city estimates is almost 20% in some cases for smaller populations. I cannot find an exact uncertainty for the US Census, but the error is expressed only at a 90% confidence level.

Saying a city in upstate NY grew or declined by a small amount is trivial. You cannot go by what Wikipedia, Forbes or most any source because none give a source to their data, or an uncertainty to the estimate. The only true estimate is the US Census, they actually do a count and attach an uncertainty to the number. This way we know that the city grew/shrank by x% amount +/- the uncertainty of their measurement. The problem with the Census is that one is only performed every ten years and the measurement is never completely reliable. People lie, people are often left out, people move around and are often double counted. This is why the Census attaches an uncertainty to the number, so that we know what range of values the true value will lye.

I am not the greatest at statistics, but this should hopefully enlighten people who sit there all day and argue 0.5% as a gain or loss. Because truthfully you do not know until you either get into a high percentage growth, with a high population or the source of the data can attach an uncertainty to the number.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by cheese9988

Just to add a tad bit to that. The ONLY reason Rochester is doing better is the optical industry, Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, etc. Even though the industry declined, smaller business were spun off and other corporations came in and either bought out some of Kodaks assets or used them for new business of their own.

When you get down into growth/decline of 2% or less, with smaller populations the figures start to get very VERY unreliable, even when using a recent census. With some of the data that I have looked up, the approximate error within the city estimates is almost 20% in some cases for smaller populations. I cannot find an exact uncertainty for the US Census, but the error is expressed only at a 90% confidence level.

Saying a city in upstate NY grew or declined by a small amount is trivial. You cannot go by what Wikipedia, Forbes or most any source because none give a source to their data, or an uncertainty to the estimate. The only true estimate is the US Census, they actually do a count and attach an uncertainty to the number. This way we know that the city grew/shrank by x% amount +/- the uncertainty of their measurement. The problem with the Census is that one is only performed every ten years and the measurement is never completely reliable. People lie, people are often left out, people move around and are often double counted. This is why the Census attaches an uncertainty to the number, so that we know what range of values the true value will lye.

I am not the greatest at statistics, but this should hopefully enlighten people who sit there all day and argue 0.5% as a gain or loss. Because truthfully you do not know until you either get into a high percentage growth, with a high population or the source of the data can attach an uncertainty to the number.

Great points!

[Canerican]

Originally Posted by bellafinzi

Rochester, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area (CBSA) Population and Components of Change

Rochester MSA

1970 ~ 961,516
2008 ~ 1,034,090

That is growth in my book.

Wow Rochester's MSA is bigger than Buffalo...

That is actually shocking, it should be news.

I have a question is Batavia in Buffalo or Rochester's MSA? That is truly an event. Buffalo even has Niagara Falls boosting the MSA.

Erie county has a higher population, but has more land area (about 400 sq. miles more). Almost half of Monroe county is water, so I would bet the population density only county land is higher in Monroe county, but I don't feel like doing the math right now.

It's a truly sad day when Rochester is surpassing a formerly great American city in terms of population (thus loss mitigation)

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by Canerican

Wow Rochester's MSA is bigger than Buffalo...

That is actually shocking, it should be news.

I have a question is Batavia in Buffalo or Rochester's MSA? That is truly an event. Buffalo even has Niagara Falls boosting the MSA.

Erie county has a higher population, but has more land area (about 400 sq. miles more). Almost half of Monroe county is water, so I would bet the population density only county land is higher in Monroe county, but I don't feel like doing the math right now.

It's a truly sad day when Rochester is surpassing a formerly great American city in terms of population (thus loss mitigation)

Actually, Buffalo's is slightly bigger and that's for only 2 counties. Rochester has about 6 in it's MSA.

Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY MSA Demographic-Economic Situation & Outlook