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It’s something else, mostly personal judgment. It may be MSA for some places, CSA for others, DMA when talking about one thing, GDP when talking about another. Incidentally GDP is calculated at a county level, so you’d still need to make a CSA/MSA call before you can trot it out.
I said personal judgment. It depends on the discussion. If I’m talking market size, there is an argument for DMA. If I’m talking the wealth of a city, it makes sense to look at the county gdp. Some places are better CSA (or two MSA), others are better just MSA. All depends, there is no universal stat. The world is nuanced, and we have different stats and a brain to muddle through with comparisons.
City limits are nearly worthless in judging the size of a city- no one in their right mind would say that Wichita is bigger than St Louis, or that Jacksonville is bigger than Miami.
Metro size isn't perfect, but it's far and away a more reliable measure of a city's size than city limit population.
I said personal judgment. It depends on the discussion. If I’m talking market size, there is an argument for DMA. If I’m talking the wealth of a city, it makes sense to look at the county gdp. Some places are better CSA (or two MSA), others are better just MSA. All depends, there is no universal stat. The world is nuanced, and we have different stats and a brain to muddle through with comparisons.
Well, personal judgement generally derived from one's understanding of some standard or metric...
I think you're missing the point of the thread. It isnt to find a universal standard. The question is, what metric comes closest to correlating to city size? Not, which metric is universally applicable. I'm pretty sure its well understood around here that there is plenty of nuance to evaluating cities...
So for you, the metric used just depends on what topic we are talking about? Just clarifying the intent of the thread. We can be talking about anything under the sun and there can still be one or two metrics that most closely correlate to city size...
City limits are nearly worthless in judging the size of a city- no one in their right mind would say that Wichita is bigger than St Louis, or that Jacksonville is bigger than Miami.
Metro size isn't perfect, but it's far and away a more reliable measure of a city's size than city limit population.
I'd say it's a combination of city and metro...
Miami is obviously MUCH bigger than Indianapolis or Columbus, so in this case, metro population is a good indicator of its size, but when comparing it to, say, Philadelphia, city population, to me, is a better indicator. Philadelphia feels like a MUCH bigger city than Miami, or Atlanta for that matter, despite nearly identical MSA numbers.
I'd say it's a combination of city and metro...
Miami is obviously MUCH bigger than Indianapolis or Columbus, so in this case, metro population is a good indicator of its size, but when comparing it to, say, Philadelphia, city population, to me, is a better indicator. Philadelphia feels like a MUCH bigger city than Miami, or Atlanta for that matter, despite nearly identical MSA numbers.
I think metro GDP is the best, probably. The cities that "feel small" tend to underperform there. What's probably even better is "urban area" GDP, but I'm not sure if that data is kept anywhere.
I'll actually say CSA>MSA, but I guess it depends on the context. It also depends on what exactly it is we are trying to define. DMA is underrated, too.
UA is great for capturing how Urban a city is, generally speaking. Cities under or over perform there, depending.
City effectively is just that.. a stat. I guess maybe it reflects tax base-or degree to which the surrounding area and suburbs are more or less prominent.
DMA I think does a decent job, with some exceptions of molding together certain economic and population factors because of what it measures.
MSA isn't bad-but sells certain places significantly short, when it's very clear in many cases that said areas act in correlation with one another
GDP can capture prominence and urbanism, but with the caveat that it only does so when comparing like with like (US cities), and even then, it is skewed towards certain areas that are less than big or urban.
Land Area can measure how not urban a place is lol. Take Juneau, AK, Jacksonville, or even to a degree, Houston. It can also capture just how urban a place is, if said land area is smaller (Miami and Boston, for example)
CSA to me, gives a picture of the whole region, even if imperfect, or not reflecting how sprawling and separate to a degree certain CSAs are.
Well, personal judgement generally derived from one's understanding of some standard or metric...
I think you're missing the point of the thread. It isnt to find a universal standard. The question is, what metric comes closest to correlating to city size? Not, which metric is universally applicable. I'm pretty sure its well understood around here that there is plenty of nuance to evaluating cities...
So for you, the metric used just depends on what topic we are talking about? Just clarifying the intent of the thread. We can be talking about anything under the sun and there can still be one or two metrics that most closely correlate to city size...
Well this thread poll seems kinda jumbled to me. No one really talks about tv market size unless talking about tv ratings, which I’m not ever sure are a thing anymore in the era of streaming. You could work it in as a shorthand for the economic market I suppose. And GDP is done with a different measuring unit. Even if you were going to place a dollar figure on a person, it should be noted that it’s a county-wide measurement. So to even use GDP, you’d have to make a determination on MSA/CSA/some subset.
MSA is probably the most useful (until it isn’t). Much data is done at an MSA level. But the outliers are such that MSA really doesn’t work for them. The county level data, the building blocks for MSAs, are helpful in such cases as a workaround to MSA’s problems. CSA’s probably work best to combine any overlapping MSA’s (because Boston isn’t bigger than the Bay Area even if it’s MSA is). Some places are so isolated that they have no CSA (Phoenix). Wiki has a chart of Primary Statistical Areas which ranks places on their largest statistical area, whether CSA or MSA, and it’s probably the closest you’ll get to an accurate snapshot of something as “city size” for most people.
Last edited by Heel82; 11-09-2020 at 01:32 PM..
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