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So, we've basically got an official MSA population of over 4,000,000 for the Inland Empire, and that's bloated due to the inclusion of the Palm Springs area, which should really be it's own MSA. Then we've got the LA MSA which is short-changed because the Riverside/San Bernardino/Ontario area is not included. And it should be, because the LA area of sp0rawl doesn't suddenly end at San B. Crazy, huh?
Wow. 329 miles. That's about the distance between Minneapolis and Chicago. Might as well throw them into the same MSA. LOL.
Well, the 329 miles is the CSA, not the MSA. Still though, it IS pretty excessive considering that most people in Southern California live within a 70 mile radius of downtown Los Angeles (70 miles north is the northern limit of Palmdale/Lancaster, 70 miles south is San Clemente at the end of Orange County, 70 miles east is roughly Redlands, 70 miles west is Ventura)
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So, we've basically got an official MSA population of over 4,000,000 for the Inland Empire, and that's bloated due to the inclusion of the Palm Springs area, which should really be it's own MSA. Then we've got the LA MSA which is short-changed because the Riverside/San Bernardino/Ontario area is not included. And it should be, because the LA area of sp0rawl doesn't suddenly end at San B. Crazy, huh?
Well, it is what it is. For SoCal residents, it doesn't quite work that way, nor does it really matter that much. Who cares, really? I think at this point, most of us want to see that number go down. Traffic is already bad enough without more people wanting to come here and annoy us
I think the definition of an urbanized area is more complex than just looking at distances and population densities. I recently saw a report on a new high-speed train running from Shanghai to Hangzhou. The report concluded by stating that the presence of this train
route increases the size of Shanghai’s urbanized area. The point was that people could now get from Hangzhou into Shanghai in about forty-five minutes.
Clearly, things such as transportation infrastructure, employment opportunities, and cultural/entertainment/sports venues available in the central city play a significant role in defining the boundaries of an urbanized region.
Here's a strange one:
The Carson City, Nevada MSA consists of-- get this-- Carson City (168 sq mi). That's it. No surrounding areas are included in the MSA. No wonder it's dead last in population (363'rd largest MSA in the U.S.)!
If Carson City must be an MSA, then why isn't Douglas County, directly to the south, included? And why is Lyon County (to the east) a separate Micropolitan area? Mind you, this is the one part of Nevada where some of the counties are reasonably sized.
But my biggest question is, why does Carson City need it's own MSA anyway? It's located right next to the two-county Reno-Sparks MSA. Carson City is only 25 miles from Reno; surely lots of people commute between the two cities.
At the same time, the Reno MSA includes the far reaches of Washoe County, NV, which is over 150 miles in length of mostly barren desert. It's yet another example of how using county lines doesn't work.
Columbia, SC is an example of this. The MSA has nearly 750,000 people, but it includes all of Calhoun, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lexington, Richland, and Saluda counties. All the counties except for Lexington, Richland and parts of Kershaw are very rural, and the two major counties have less than 630,000, 30,000 less than Charleston.
With Charleston, though, you include all of the rural parts of Berkeley and Dorchester counties that are 30 or 40 miles away from downtown.
The town of Needles, California has a campaign to secede from CA and to join NV or AZ instead. Needles is several hours drive from its county seat, which shortchanges it on public services. But Needles is right across the river from Lake Havasu / Laughlin / Bullhead City which is an economically booming area with better services, much lower gasoline taxes and sales taxes than in Needles.
^Interesting...and totally understandable! But sadly, no U.S. state would ever give up land for the benefit of a neighboring state. Recently, some lawmakers in the state of Georgia actually proposed that its border with Tennessee be moved a mile north, which would give GA access to a new source of abundant fresh water. (Hasn't happened.)
In fact, I believe the last time any of the states actually grew in physical size was in 1846, when the approx. 32-square-mile area that had once been carved out of Virginia to help create the District of Columbia was rightfully returned to VA.
Back to original topic... The way borders of MSA's are drawn creates a lot of strange anomalies. The Duluth-Superior MN-WI MSA includes the largest county in area east of the Mississippi, St Louis County Minnesota. At 6860 sq miles, the county is so big that it's doing a study to determine if it should be split into two counties. True! Meanwhile, residents of the northern portion of the county are oficially part of the Duluth-Superior MSA, even through they live well over 100 miles from town.
I have a big problem with the MSA thing in general. It's very unfair, especially to my area.
The Cleveland metro only takes up 2,000 sq miles and has 2.1 million people, it actually doesn't even include a county bordering Cleveland (Summit County) because they call Akron a seperate MSA. The St. Louis metro takes up 8,000 sq miles and has 2.8 million people. This same land area (8,000 sq miles) is the entire area of NE Ohio, which includes over 5 million people in the region/megalopolis. There are currently 4-5 metropolitan areas in NE Ohio and 4-5 more micropolitan areas as well, remember this is all in the same area as the St. Louis metro.
My problem is that they make our area and population look much smaller than it actually is. They have all these other areas with joined cities and areas under 1 metropolitan area, but divide ours up into many smaller areas. Even in our own state Columbus and Cincinnati metros take up twice our land area. It's very misleading. I'm not saying 100% that the entire area of NE Ohio should be 1 metro area (but at least in 1 CSA), but at least no more than 2 or 3. With 5.2 million people we would be the 10th largest metro and 11-12 largest CSA.
There are a lot of MSA/CSA designations that don't make sense to me. In North Carolina, there are two such areas: The Triangle and The Triad. Both were split into two MSAs within the last decade. Each area's visibility was diminished by the action. For example, the former Raleigh/Durham MSA is more populated than Jacksonville Fl, Memphis, Nashville, OK City, Louisville, New Orleans, Richmond, etc. Yet, the new designations split the region and pushed both Raleigh and Durham down the list. Raleigh alone will eventually overtake many on the list above but Durham will always lag in visibility. Its CSA puts the region in a more appropriate light and really tells a better story.
Miami's MSA is an interesting study. In only 3 counties, the MSA houses over 5 million. However, much of that land is swamp, protected and undevelopable. It's not going to grow outward, only upward. Other metros will grow larger simply because they have many adjacent counties to annex while Miami's MSA can only reasonably grow to counties to its north.
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