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.
Since there is a similar topic on another forum about this and because urban area is looked at by many as the best measurement for a given place's actual size (not saying I agree with that but there are many that feel it is the best overall metric).
This is the United States Census Bureau's Urban Area metric by the way, not to be confused with Demographia's Urban Area, which is a different metric altogether (and my personal pick for the best metric to measure city size but that's just solely my own opinion on the matter).
For those that want to see the population of the United States Urban Area in 2010, then they may do so here:
This is my favorite metric for determining how the built area of sunbelt metros is really set up. Take Charlotte vs Orlando for example. Just looking at city population you'd assume Charlotte is the bigger, no questions asked. Then if you look at metro, and a closer race emerges with Orlando still slightly trailing. However if you look at UA population, a much different story begins to emerge.
See UA shows a continuous density population vs just far flung commuting trends. Its almost like drawling a line around all the touching suburbs/city on Google Earth and finding the population for that area.
Because the Daytona Beach metro is so close to the Orlando MSA, we loose credit for suburbs that are connected to Orlando via commuter rail, but in the same county as Daytona.
This doesn't make sense when far flung Charlotte suburbs are counted because they don't have nearby metros siphoning off population stats.
This was not meant to become a Charlotte vs Orlando debate, just an example of why I prefer UA for getting a more accurate picture of how many people actually live in the built area of any metro vs the entire county if said county is deemed to be in a certain metro.
Concord, Gastonia, Rock Hill are not far flung suburbs. The metro area is literally called Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia metropolitan area. Yet the area consist of 4 Urban areas. It's not an accurate depiction in this case. The only different story here is that you need to add up all the UA's within 1 MSA to get a clear picture.
Charlotte really gets the short end of the stick having areas adjacent to the city and county that aren't even included in the urban area....There should be at least 2million people realistically....
*At least* 2 million? How? Lol
Charlotte metro region as a whole is barely bigger than that... you probably could add 100-200k extra people.
Rock hill city population ALONE: 75000
Gastonia city population ALONE: 75000
Concord city population ALONE: 94000
This is not even including the entire UAs for these cities. Adding all up would easily be 400,000 plus.
It’s not 2 million. To pretend Charlotte is, a metro a tad over 2.5 million, has a continuous urbanized area of *at least* 2 million would make it one of the most urbanized metro areas pound for pound. I find that hard to believe.
It’s not 2 million. To pretend Charlotte is, a metro a tad over 2.5 million, has a continuous urbanized area of *at least* 2 million would make it one of the most urbanized metro areas pound for pound. I find that hard to believe.
No one is *pretending* about anything. There are 4 separate UAs within the MSA, why does that seem to be an issue when it's brought up? If not 2 million, the Urban areas added populations are closing in on it quickly.
No one is calling Charlotte one of the most urbanized metro areas, not sure where you gathered that from. This is strictly about population statistics.
Last edited by carolinablue; 07-03-2019 at 09:02 AM..
Apologies for the inconvenience Walrus, I'm not able to do better than this map. Primarily because Urban Area is a wild metric. Unlike MSAs and CSAs, they aren't subject to county lines or any fixed boundaries and jurisdictions but rather to urbanized contiguous non-broken development that meet the minimum density requirements to exist.
Use the map I linked as a side by side comparison tool with maps.google.com, and it should give you a roughly decent sketch and/or idea on the boundaries of the urban area as it correlates to the cities and towns within it.
Woah, yeah. That’s wild!
The North Shore around Plum Island is like an urban archipelago!
You like this metric because it shows your city as having more people than the other tools and you find that more representative.
You don't like this metric because it shows your city as having fewer people than the other tools and you find that less representative.
Yep. Welcome to the world of DATA
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.
