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DC is growing fast enough. It is already over congested as it is. If the Atlanta MSA does surpass DC I wouldn't say that is a good accomplishment. Nor would I say that just because the Atlanta MSA has a larger population it will somehow feel like a more dynamic region. As posters have already mentioned Atlanta population is over a larger land area. The only city that is really close enough or large enough to compete with Atlanta is Charlotte which is still 4 hours away from it. DC is 45 mins from Baltimore, 1.5 hours from Richmond, and 2 hours from Philadelphia. DC is much more densely populated than Atlanta which means it will be more expensive and more difficult for people to live in the area. The fact that the DC area is still growing while being prohibitively expensive suggests that it's strong economy outweighs the price to live there.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cdw1084
DC/Baltimore: CSA
Atlanta: MSA
Unfortunately, equal land area doesn't align with the definitions designed for MSA. In the case of DC, it just lost 2 counties because of commuting patterns.
So at the end, I guess that we can all agree that Atlanta has a significantly larger MSA in size, less dense, and more populated.
Losing two exurban counties, one that most people never even heard of until 2018, is a good thing IMO, and I'm glad the MSA shaved off some rural fat. The DC MSA just gained density because of it. These two MSA's never be an apples to apples, as it's physically impossible to be. The northernmost tip of DC to Columbia, MD is 18 miles in a different MSA. If you overlaid a map of the DC area on top of a map of Atlanta's this would be akin to Buckhead to Alpharetta (20 miles away) being part of a different metro area.
It's not all about unequal land area, it's that MSA is not a very consistent metric across the country in capture actual population "size" of a "city" or how many individuals live in and around one place. US standards for capturing a metropolis region are bloated because the MSA and CSA's have to capture entire counties. The smaller those counties are with even low commuter shed means they get sucked into the nearest major city. Coweta, Carroll, Paulding, or Rockdale, and Newton counties are no more associated with "Atlanta" than parts of Howard or Anne Arundel would be in the DC area, and there are likely more human beings crossing counties between DC-Balt suburbs, but the MSA's split the population up.
The DC area is really focused on the core area. That's where activity, growth, and density is. The DC beltway is over 2 million people living inside of it in 256 sq mi, and the core counties that make up the MSA are growing roughly around the same rate of Atlanta's major counties. Good for both they'll likely stay 6/7 MSA's then focus should be on bettering the local areas and sustaining that growth. Long term they'll both likely stay in front of Philadelphia, and I see that order holding for a while by MSA.
Washington's metro and Baltimore's metro are more akin to the LA and OC combination, or Riverside, than it is San Diego and LA. You're just caught up in the two being distinct cities. Like has been mentioned, there is no DC-Baltimore equivalent in the USA or North America tbh, and you have to look to Asia or other parts of the world to juxtapose it.
San Diego is a further distance from LA than DC is to Philadelphia. That's no comparison to the DC-Baltimore region which is one metro-plex of two major cities that share local non-touristy amenities in between, but still retain their own distinctions. In fact it really is a more textbook example of what a is CSA along with the Bay Area.
Losing two exurban counties, one that most people never even heard of until 2018, is a good thing IMO, and I'm glad the MSA shaved off some rural fat. The DC MSA just gained density because of it. These two MSA's never be an apples to apples, as it's physically impossible to be. The northernmost tip of DC to Columbia, MD is 18 miles in a different MSA. If you overlaid a map of the DC area on top of a map of Atlanta's this would be akin to Buckhead to Alpharetta (20 miles away) being part of a different metro area.
It's not all about unequal land area, it's that MSA is not a very consistent metric across the country in capture actual population "size" of a "city" or how many individuals live in and around one place. US standards for capturing a metropolis region are bloated because the MSA and CSA's have to capture entire counties. The smaller those counties are with even low commuter shed means they get sucked into the nearest major city. Coweta, Carroll, Paulding, or Rockdale, and Newton counties are no more associated with "Atlanta" than parts of Howard or Anne Arundel would be in the DC area, and there are likely more human beings crossing counties between DC-Balt suburbs, but the MSA's split the population up.
The DC area is really focused on the core area. That's where activity, growth, and density is. The DC beltway is over 2 million people living inside of it in 256 sq mi, and the core counties that make up the MSA are growing roughly around the same rate of Atlanta's major counties. Good for both they'll likely stay 6/7 MSA's then focus should be on bettering the local areas and sustaining that growth. Long term they'll both likely stay in front of Philadelphia, and I see that order holding for a while by MSA.
I'm sorry but I disagree with your comments about the Metro Atlanta counties not being connected to Atlanta compared with the MD counties and DC. The commuting patterns for the Atlanta counties are well about the MSA's threshold. On the other hand, those MD counties fall below it. I'm not sure why people continue to say that the MSA standards aren't consistent when it uses the same guidelines to determine boundaries for each metro area.
Of course the standards are consistent, but they're applied using the county geography, which isn't consistently applied across states: the median Maryland county would be 503 sq mi, the median Georgia county is 343 sq mi.
Anne Arundel County MD is almost 3X the size of Clayton County GA. If Maryland had smaller counties and AAC were instead three counties, it very well might be split among three MSAs -- North AAC would be suburban Baltimore, middle AAC might be an Annapolis micro-SA, and South AAC would be suburban DC. But because it's one county, and North AAC is the most populous, the entire thing is deemed part of the Baltimore MSA.
The Atlanta MSA extends past the sprawl in every direction, with a wide rural buffer. So does the DC MSA on the Virginia side, where counties are even smaller than in Georgia. But on the Maryland side, the MSA stops abruptly in the middle of suburbia.
We'll See in March when the Census releases it's official Results for Metropolitan Areas. I Anticipate the results, but honestly I think there's no stopping Atlanta
We'll See in March when the Census releases it's official Results for Metropolitan Areas. I Anticipate the results, but honestly I think there's no stopping Atlanta
Stopping from what?
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