[Hudlander]

This is something I try to figure out I really do not have a clear answer.

-I mean, if we look at Long Island, pretty much the entire island before the Forks are urbanized continuously from New York without a major urban city core, which makes it quite easy to say they are the NY suburbs.
-Looking across the sound, we see very similar that the shore is heavily urbanized until Guilford/Madison which by that point is 90 miles from lower Manhattan - the same distance as Philadelphia.
-Yet with Philadelphia, we see there is a clear gap south of New Brunswick which is not all that developed, so we can clearly see which area is orientated towards Philly or NY (although this becomes tricky with all the urban cores in New Jersey, though with all being originally geared towards NY harbor it is not hard to decipher like CT).

-Connecticut? Well headed from NYC to Greenwich it seems pretty clear that Greenwich is a suburb of NY, but then you reach Stamford is an urban core. Is that its own MSA, or a satellite city of NY? Then in 10 miles or so, Norwalk, same question. A couple towns further east you reach Bridgeport, and then New Haven.

-Growing up being in Trumbull a lot, I always thought that it was a suburb of NYC. But learning more about Geography later I thought it was more a suburb of Bridgeport...except nobody really goes to Bridgeport.
-Now, when I drive from NY, it seems once you get to Fairfield, then you are really outside the NY metro area.
Stamford and Norwalk both are historically smaller, less tied to industry, and more in later years like a satellite city.
-Bridgeport is the largest city in CT, it was once a very busy industry city, and it seems less and less are tied with work to NYC. But Bridgeport and beyond on RT 8 heavily are tied to work in Stamford and Norwalk, which I just said appear to be NYC satellite cities, which makes it hard to call Bridgeport not metro NY.
-New Haven....if Bridgeport did not exist and there was no urban core between Norwalk and New Haven, there would be a nice gap like in Central NJ making it so New Haven was clearly not blended.
Coming east on I-95 from eastern CT though, once you get to Bradford you clearly are not in quaint New England. You are in a continuous urban stretch all the way to Manhattan similar to Long Island from Islip...which clearly is part of metro NY.

Sometimes I have thought of the DC region, not with Baltimore, but how the CBSA includes Winchester/Martinsburg. Clearly they have become part of the greater greater DC region but nobody would mistake them for being immediate metro DC or metro DC, they are not. There is a clear gap in development and the tie is much more outer DC suburb and mild than southern CT is to NY.

So is there any clear delineation between metro NY and non-metro NY from New Haven west or is it an ink blob?

[kidyankee764]

Generally where Metro-North extends would be considered the greater NYC area to most people; this includes up to New Haven, Waterbury and Danbury. Beyond that, not so much.

Stamford, Bridgeport, Danbury, Waterbury and New Haven are considered satellite cities of NYC. Their suburbs, while suburbs of the satellite city, are also suburbs or exurbs of NYC. This is generally true throughout the tri-state area (White Plains, Poughkeepsie, Newark, etc).

That’s my take, at least.

[SteveM85]

For me it's along the coast up to New Haven. It's just my gut. For others it may vary.

[dcb175]

Originally Posted by kidyankee764

Generally where Metro-North extends would be considered the greater NYC area to most people; this includes up to New Haven, Waterbury and Danbury. Beyond that, not so much.

Stamford, Bridgeport, Danbury, Waterbury and New Haven are considered satellite cities of NYC. Their suburbs, while suburbs of the satellite city, are also suburbs or exurbs of NYC. This is generally true throughout the tri-state area (White Plains, Poughkeepsie, Newark, etc).

That’s my take, at least.

Eh, I don't consider Waterbury metro NYC. I'm sure people do the commute, in the same way they do it from Allentown (about the same distance as Waterbury, ~90 miles), but not sustainable. And btw, that train commute on a weekday morning is.... drumroll..... 3 hours and 40 minutes. And that's if you live at the Waterbury train station and work at Grand Central.

I'd probably define it through the town of Fairfield, but could maybe be convinced to go a stop or two further. I'd hazard a guess the % of people commuting to NYC drops off quite a bit after that. We knew some people that moved to Southport (believe it's the western periphery of the town of Fairfield?) Door-to-door commute was in the neighborhood of 2 hours. They both ended up finding jobs in CT after a few months.

[LINative]

Honestly, if Connecticut is anything like Long Island then the day to day influence of New York City is less than you might think.

What I mean is you mentioned development all the way out to Guilford/Madison. Yeah, there might be some people traveling all the way to Grand Central day after day. But most people in that area probably don't. Manhattan is too far, it takes too long and its pretty expensive to go there every day.

I read somewhere that the majority of people in Suffolk County work on the Island, not NYC (I think Nassau is similar but not sure). There are tons of jobs now here in the suburbs, here in Suffolk we have Melville and Hauppauge as major office parks plus some more around McArthur Islip Airport. You really do not need to work in the City if you do not want to.

This is not to say that the City does not have influence pretty far out. Of course it does. But it is probably alot less then it used to be, and when you consider the whole population, especially seniors/children/students then Manhattan might as well be a thousand miles away.

[Stylo]

There are multiple definitions. The MSA doesn’t include CT, but the CSA includes Fairfield, New Haven, and Litchfield counties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_...ropolitan_area

Certainly the main New Haven train line “feels” the most connected, followed perhaps by Danbury.

[Stylo]

Originally Posted by LINative

Honestly, if Connecticut is anything like Long Island then the day to day influence of New York City is less than you might think.

What I mean is you mentioned development all the way out to Guilford/Madison. Yeah, there might be some people traveling all the way to Grand Central day after day. But most people in that area probably don't. Manhattan is too far, it takes too long and its pretty expensive to go there every day.

I read somewhere that the majority of people in Suffolk County work on the Island, not NYC (I think Nassau is similar but not sure). There are tons of jobs now here in the suburbs, here in Suffolk we have Melville and Hauppauge as major office parks plus some more around McArthur Islip Airport. You really do not need to work in the City if you do not want to.

This is not to say that the City does not have influence pretty far out. Of course it does. But it is probably alot less than it used to be, and when you consider the whole population, especially seniors/children/students then Manhattan might as well be a thousand miles away.

Guilford/Madison has become a second home territory for NY’ers. Plenty of NY plates in driveways and bopping around town. Particularly in summer. This has brought about development in the sense of an injection of money. But I’d imagine the commuters are rather rare.

[7 Wishes]

Personally I consider the end to be Danbury and Stratford. Although Waterbury and New Haven are on Metro North, they are not in the NYC TV/radio market. And when I have been to the 2 cities, I have seen things that clearly make them less "metro NY" than Danbury or Bridgeport. For example, I see much more in the way of Boston sports gear in stores in those cities (though I see some NYC sports gear). And while a silly example, McDonald's considers Waterbury and New Haven to not be in their NY metro marketing region. There are promos and test market items you will see in McDonald's in Danbury or Bridgeport (a good example was when they attempted to do mozzarella sticks, for which metro NYC was actually a test market) and not in New Haven or Waterbury or vice versa (a good example of the reverse as a test market was a McLobster sandwich, which you could get as close as Milford, but no further west).

Until I believe either the 2010 or 2020 Census, they didn't even consider New Haven or Waterbury to be part of the New York CMSA and considering they do not get NYC TV/radio, it's still controversial. Similarly, they took the Trenton, NJ area out of the Philly CMSA during that time and made it part of NYC CMSA, even more controversial because in addition to being squarely in the Philly media market, it's only 30 miles from Philly vs. 70 miles from Manhattan and is on Philly commuter rail lines (though it's also the terminus of NYC commuter rail too, similar to New Haven and Waterbury). But I guess my next response below is one reason they did it....

Originally Posted by Hudlander

-Yet with Philadelphia, we see there is a clear gap south of New Brunswick which is not all that developed, so we can clearly see which area is orientated towards Philly or NY (although this becomes tricky with all the urban cores in New Jersey, though with all being originally geared towards NY harbor it is not hard to decipher like CT).

When I was a kid just north of NYC in the 1980s, we made many a summer drive to relatives in Florida and went through this very zone. Back then you could see farms galore after New Brunswick on the NJ Turnpike. My most recent experience with this region is two class trips (I'm a middle school teacher) to Washington, DC in the last 2 years. No more, definitely continuous development now, sure not high rises and houses cheek-by-jowl with each other, but plenty of condo developments all around and no farms.

In fact going down the Turnpike where I actually start to see farms is around exit 7A near Trenton closer to Philly and then even getting to within maybe 25-30 miles of Philly you see farms as you go past exits 6 and 5. After exit 5 you see some of Philly's suburban development, but it does go back to farms again after exit 3 until you get close to Delaware. This is because of lot of Philadelphia's suburban development in NJ is along the river and not too far inland at least once you're about 15-20 miles up or downriver from the city (right across downtown Philly like in Camden it does stay developed pretty far inland), then it briefly cranks up again near Wilmington, DE.

One thing that shows is the true size and vastness of continuous development going out from NYC, really not too different from L.A., the supposed poster child of that; even compared to a city that is probably the #5 or so city/metro area in the country (and as recently as 1950 was #3! In fact it is the only city other than NYC, LA, Chicago or Houston to have ever had 2 million residents in it's city borders and did so with 1/4 the area of Houston and 1/3 the area of LA)

[Stylo]

There’s very very little Boston or Hartford influence here in Milford, 7 Wishes. Especially with regards to sports teams. And so few people watch live network TV these days.

[BPt111]

Lower Fairfield County, Redding, Ridgefield, Wilton, Redding mostly you see change on I-95 when cross into Stratford but the minimal effect influence is Milford to New Haven, Branford, Guilford, Madison, Wallingford, Derby to Waterbury, Danbury, Newtown.