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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.
Well we are not talking about far flung suburbs for Charlotte. We are talking about major suburbs with continuous development that are adjacent to Charlotte that would add almost 1million more people to the Urban area. I've been to Orlando and it does not feel at all like it has 1million more people than Charlotte....I'm sorry
Ok time to move on from the Charlotte centric portion of this conversation. This thread is about all urban areas in the OP not just Charlotte. A few posts about certain cities is fine, a few pages means we are on a different topic.
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.
The Concord UA has evolved as a northeastern extension of the Charlotte UA and by all accounts should be folded into the Charlotte UA. I think there are still undeveloped areas between Charlotte and Gastonia for the latter to remain a separate UA, although that's rapidly changing. Rock Hill is somewhere between Concord and Gastonia in terms of its connection to the Charlotte UA.
I agree with you that in reality, Charlotte's "real" UA is upwards of 200K more populous than official stats show.
Interesting how close Houston is to DFW here while every other metric has DFW over Houston by at least half a million.
I don't know many people who live in Lewisville or Denton that think they live somewhere other than DFW. I don't know enough about McKinney to comment on that being a separate UA, but it seems silly to me that Denton and Lewisville are.
I don't know many people who live in Lewisville or Denton that think they live somewhere other than DFW. I don't know enough about McKinney to comment on that being a separate UA, but it seems silly to me that Denton and Lewisville are.
The Concord UA has evolved as a northeastern extension of the Charlotte UA and by all accounts should be folded into the Charlotte UA. I think there are still undeveloped areas between Charlotte and Gastonia for the latter to remain a separate UA, although that's rapidly changing. Rock Hill is somewhere between Concord and Gastonia in terms of its connection to the Charlotte UA.
I agree with you that in reality, Charlotte's "real" UA is upwards of 200K more populous than official stats show.
I can concede this much. You can tell this much by how people speak in that area, most people in that metro area speak of Gastonia as its own thing. You don’t get that here in Atlanta until you get at least 40 miles out where there is developmental gap.
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....
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).
I expected to see Nashville post much higher numbers.
It would be a flat out lie to say that Nashville is all hype, but hype has a way of distorting reality.
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