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thoughts, based on the way development is going now in each area?
talking both size and population.
and by Metro Area, I am talking the City itself, and everything within say...15 miles of it.
Your definition of the metro area is not conventional as that leaves a lot of population outside the traditionally defined metro areas. A large portion of Putnam County is left out of both Charleston and Huntington. Hunting reaches no further then the western edge of Milton and Charleston reaches just too Teays Valley. Putnam County was once in Charleston's Metro and it is now considered to be in Huntington's. I suppose the reconfiguration had to do with retail sales. Putnam County residents, work in Charleston and shop in Ona at the Huntington Mall.
Based on some quick figures it looks like Huntington and Charleston are roughly even in this area with this definition. A good chunk of the Huntington area is still outside the 15-mile limit in Ohio and Kentucky, even taking into account both Ironton and Ashland are inside the radius.
Based on that, we have to guess which metro is going to grow more in the foreseeable future. That is crystal ball stuff and I am not sure a valid answer can be given. West Virginia has had mostly static population growth with exceptions around Morgantown and Martinsburg. But, both of the areas are a long way from even being in the same ball park population wise with Charleston or Huntington.
Huntington is a one trick pony when it comes to growth, it is All Marshall All the Time. MU is a smaller university and even when it sees respectable growth that is still on the small side of real numbers. Charleston's growth is tied to the economic status of the state as a whole, which makes sense since it is the political and business heart of the state.
If the economy stays flat, then Huntington should slowly grow larger in this definition over Charleston. But if there is any uptick in the economy, Charleston has a very good chance of growing larger. Mind you, I don't think either one of them have any reasonable chance of even adding even a few thousand people to these 15-mile radius metro zones.
Your definition of the metro area is not conventional as that leaves a lot of population outside the traditionally defined metro areas. A large portion of Putnam County is left out of both Charleston and Huntington. Hunting reaches no further then the western edge of Milton and Charleston reaches just too Teays Valley. Putnam County was once in Charleston's Metro and it is now considered to be in Huntington's. I suppose the reconfiguration had to do with retail sales. Putnam County residents, work in Charleston and shop in Ona at the Huntington Mall.
Based on some quick figures it looks like Huntington and Charleston are roughly even in this area with this definition. A good chunk of the Huntington area is still outside the 15-mile limit in Ohio and Kentucky, even taking into account both Ironton and Ashland are inside the radius.
Based on that, we have to guess which metro is going to grow more in the foreseeable future. That is crystal ball stuff and I am not sure a valid answer can be given. West Virginia has had mostly static population growth with exceptions around Morgantown and Martinsburg. But, both of the areas are a long way from even being in the same ball park population wise with Charleston or Huntington.
Huntington is a one trick pony when it comes to growth, it is All Marshall All the Time. MU is a smaller university and even when it sees respectable growth that is still on the small side of real numbers. Charleston's growth is tied to the economic status of the state as a whole, which makes sense since it is the political and business heart of the state.
If the economy stays flat, then Huntington should slowly grow larger in this definition over Charleston. But if there is any uptick in the economy, Charleston has a very good chance of growing larger. Mind you, I don't think either one of them have any reasonable chance of even adding even a few thousand people to these 15-mile radius metro zones.
good points. i will amend my criteria.
*edit* Maybe not, i didn't reaize that the edit feature was time sensitive.
*edit* Maybe not, i didn't reaize that the edit feature was time sensitive.
Don't I know it. I will quickly bang stuff out faster thinking faster than my poor fingers can type it out. Inevitably, I leave out a word, part of word or spell something obviously wrong. You can't go back and edit and forever look like a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Neanderthal. Sigh, edit would be nice.
You are putting emphasis on 2 different things here, but the use of federal "metro" designations is very misleading, fickle, and arbitrary at best. The largest actual "metro" area in our state in my opinon is easily Martinsburg, which is in reality part of the massive DC/Baltimore metro area of several million people. However, in federal classification it is lumped separately with Hagerstown, MD and listed as having a population of more than 256,000 people.
Charles Town (Jefferson County) is actually officially the largest official metro area because it is officially a part of the DC/Baltimore metro area of more than 9 million people (7th. largest in the country).
Huntington is listed as having a larger official metro area than Martinsburg, at more than 360,000 people, but I struggle to see the relevance of that designation when there are fewer people and less economic activity there than say in Mon County.
The use of a 15 mile analytical point is also confusing. Kanawha County, for example, is huge geographically and has an extensive rural and semi rural component on the eastern part of it. Much of that is more than 15 miles from anything with significant development, but would be classified as being part of the Charleston metro based solely on being in the county limits. A combination of Monongalia, Marion, and Harrison counties would have about the same geographic area and the same population as Kanawha.
I'm not sure what your framework for analysis happens to be. If it is population within a county or retail trade, for example, Monongalia is easily larger than Cabell in both cases. Fringe areas can, or may not be included in federal zones, seemingly on a whim. Personally, I believe there is also political interference in the designations as well. Here in Morgantown, we are literally 5 miles from the Pittsburgh "metro" area at Point Marion, but the southern half of Fayette County shops and works in Monongalia more than in Pittsburgh while the entire area is included in the Pittsburgh metro area by the Feds due to county lines. Same could be said for Greene County PA which is only 4 miles away. Garrett County MD also has close ties to Mon County but is not included in our statistics.
The various parts of West Virginia are quite different than each other on several levels. It is really hard to compare them for that reason. I don't like threads like this one, because they invariably lead to bickering.
Your question about development might bring response from others about their areas, but I can only say that here in Morgantown it is happening more quickly than I can keep up with, and I actually make an effort to do that. I stopped posting the smaller projects on this site because there have been so many larger ones recently. At this point, there are major projects on the western side of I-79 that include a FedEx distribution facility employing 400 people, 2 hotels, a large sporting goods store, an auto dealership, a couple restaurants, and supposedly another yet to be named large facility. In addition, WVU Childrens is going to build a new childrens hospital that will employ 1,000 people when completed. On the eastern side of I-79 we have a new furniture store, 2 new restaurants, and WVU Medicine is building something (I'm not certain of the purpose).
I would guess that Mon County is the fastest growing economy in our state, but Berkeley County the fastest growing population because it serves increasingly as a bedroom community for DC/Baltimore. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Berkeley has more people living in it than any other county 10 years from now. I say that for 2 reasons... they are gaining people quickly, and Kanawha is losing people almost as quickly.
Last edited by CTMountaineer; 10-09-2016 at 12:21 AM..
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I like to use Urban Areas. Go to google type US Wiki Urban Areas. These are the "truest" sizes of city areas in my opinion (and many others) defined by the US Census.
2015 estimates figures for urban areas are available for select urban areas over 300k. I think it is safe to presume that Huntington, WV will likely still be the largest urban area in the state in 2020. You might argue that Charleston is the most important city in the state (even though it is a smaller urban area than Huntington) because it is the state capital, and also because it is also completely contained within the state of WV, whereas the Huntington urban area spills into KY and OH.
Also, for the record I really do like WV. So much history and connection with nature.
I like to use Urban Areas. Go to google type US Wiki Urban Areas. These are the "truest" sizes of city areas in my opinion (and many others) defined by the US Census.
I like to use Urban Areas. Go to google type US Wiki Urban Areas. These are the "truest" sizes of city areas in my opinion (and many others) defined by the US Census.
2015 estimates figures for urban areas are available for select urban areas over 300k. I think it is safe to presume that Huntington, WV will likely still be the largest urban area in the state in 2020. You might argue that Charleston is the most important city in the state (even though it is a smaller urban area than Huntington) because it is the state capital, and also because it is also completely contained within the state of WV, whereas the Huntington urban area spills into KY and OH.
Also, for the record I really do like WV. So much history and connection with nature.
I find some serious errors in these numbers - not the first time Wikipedia has been "tinkered" with on hard data. Sigh. For all of you, Wikipedia is not a valid source on any data because it can be edited by anyone without very little oversight. At best, it can be sued as a guide as most of its entry do include links to better sources some of which are peer reviewed.
I went through the methodology on this entry and found some glaring mistakes.
Charleston is credited here with 153,199 which does not even include all of Kanawha County 188,132. I thought to myself well this is supposed to be an urbanized methodology meaning those areas that are sparsely populated would be excluded. I asked myself what was the limit there - 2,500 people! That is a big exclusion limit. Most of the small towns around Charleston are excluded based on that.
But, I assumed well so long as it is the same for all cities in the comparison it should be roughly true. Many cities do not have a sprinkling of small urban clusters around as they have logically gone to a metro representation and all of it reads as one urban area. Kanawha County is not logical.
So then I dived into the Huntington data. Well...we have a difference, a huge difference!
The figure reported here is 202,637.
All of Cabell County (Huntington) is 96,844
All of Boyd County (Ashland) is 45,542
All of Lawrence County (Ironton) is 62,450
The total of those three counties is 204,836. The variance is 2,199 people. What was wrong with them that they missed the cut off?
After looking at this, you could see the data pool was drawn differently for each location and if they were done with the same method originally, they have since been "edited" - this is you know, Wikipedia. But, having been through all of those counties, as I am sure everyone here has been, they are not 100% urbanized. They aren't even 25% urbanized.
Obviously the data in this Urban Areas posting is deeply flawed.
I find some serious errors in these numbers - not the first time Wikipedia has been "tinkered" with on hard data. Sigh. For all of you, Wikipedia is not a valid source on any data because it can be edited by anyone without very little oversight. At best, it can be sued as a guide as most of its entry do include links to better sources some of which are peer reviewed.
I went through the methodology on this entry and found some glaring mistakes.
Charleston is credited here with 153,199 which does not even include all of Kanawha County 188,132. I thought to myself well this is supposed to be an urbanized methodology meaning those areas that are sparsely populated would be excluded. I asked myself what was the limit there - 2,500 people! That is a big exclusion limit. Most of the small towns around Charleston are excluded based on that.
But, I assumed well so long as it is the same for all cities in the comparison it should be roughly true. Many cities do not have a sprinkling of small urban clusters around as they have logically gone to a metro representation and all of it reads as one urban area. Kanawha County is not logical.
So then I dived into the Huntington data. Well...we have a difference, a huge difference!
The figure reported here is 202,637.
All of Cabell County (Huntington) is 96,844
All of Boyd County (Ashland) is 45,542
All of Lawrence County (Ironton) is 62,450
The total of those three counties is 204,836. The variance is 2,199 people. What was wrong with them that they missed the cut off?
After looking at this, you could see the data pool was drawn differently for each location and if they were done with the same method originally, they have since been "edited" - this is you know, Wikipedia. But, having been through all of those counties, as I am sure everyone here has been, they are not 100% urbanized. They aren't even 25% urbanized.
Obviously the data in this Urban Areas posting is deeply flawed.
The data is not from Wikipedia. The data is from the 2nd link, the U.S. Census. Wikipedia simply cut and pasted the data and organized it into a chart that is easier to read.
So any questions you have with the methodology would be with Fedgov, not Wikipedia.
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Caden Grace, I believe the data is correct. You can look these figures up (please see the second link I sent from the US Census... the gpo.gov link). I agree Wiki can be edited, but not in this case. Try the second link and do a Control + F (find) in the PDF for Huntington. Also, please note that the data dates back to 2010. So, the figures may have changed quite a bit in 6+ years.
Urban areas are not metro areas and do not go by county lines. Instead, they are developed areas that are "connected" to a city hub by meeting certain population density requirements. They are defined by the US Census and even have maps showing the specific areas that are defined in an "urban area". Urban areas serve a purpose in that they are supposed to represent areas that share one single labor market.
You did the math yourself when you closely approximated Huntington, WV urban area by adding the counties. The 2,199 population difference must live too far out in a rural area to be included. You said yourself that these counties are not 100% urban. This happens to other urban areas when trying to add up counties, and rightfully so. It is likely that Huntington lost even more than your difference to rural areas, but then added a some amount from Wayne County in Kenova and Ceredo and Greenup County near Ashland. Urban areas do not care about county lines, but rather follow development and population densities.
The 2,500-50,000 cutoff is called an "urban cluster". Urban clusters stand alone and are too far from another urban area (an area greater than 50,000). For example, Clarksburg is a large urban cluster. On the other hand, Ashland would not be a separate urban cluster because it is already included in the Huntington, WV urban area due to its proximity.
Urban areas, in my opinion, are the best methodology for measuring true city sizes because actual city limits and metros (based on county lines) are arbitrary and difficult to compare. Look at Jacksonville FL which has massive city limits and is in the top 10 largest cities in America. Yet the city limits are massive and include rural areas.
I am not trying to bash WV or its cities in any way. I like WV because it is not overly developed and exploding with overpopulation like other states are. WV has a beautiful landscape, rugged terrain, and rich history. It is a free place, and hopefully it can stay that way. The state has a good balance with nature having a stable population and a steady-state economy. WV is rare among other east coast/mid-Atlantic states. Google "USA light pollution map" and notice that most of WV is one of the last remaining areas east of the Mississippi River where you can still see the stars, milky way, and deep space objects at night. And if we are talking cities, WV is still well-known for many. Huntington, Charleston, and Wheeling are known nationally and most people have heard of them. Morgantown is also well known for having WVU.
Best of luck man. Let me know if you would like to discuss further.
Last edited by g500; 10-11-2016 at 02:47 PM..
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