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What is the bigger factor in judging the size of a city?
Growning up in New England we have cases in both directions. Boston, Providence, and Hartford are much bigger cities than their city limit populations suggest, while Worcester, my hometown, is anything but "the second largest city in New England."
I get in arguements all the time with people that you can not judge a cities size based on city limit population and have to take population density and metro population and density into account also.
Most people do look at the metropolitian area though. When I was in Dayton, OH I always heard 900,000 being thrown around loosely, even though city proper was well under 200,000. People in smaller cities like to throw around the metropolitian area, while people in bigger cities like to use the city proper.
The other night while I was watching TV, I did a comparison of the 50 largest MSA's and their corresponding cities. Here are some of my findings.
NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Seattle & Columbus all rank the same whether using city or MSA population.
The following cities range from +5 to -5 in their ranking from City to MSA population: Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Baltimore, Denver, Las Vegas, Virginia Beach & Raleigh. Essentially, these cities are in the general ballpark whether you consider city or MSA more important. Of course, CSA populations of some of these cities tends to make the metros rank much higher than the city limits.
The following cities have metros that are ranked way lower than their city's population. Essentially, these cities tend to use their city data first because they rank much higher that way. The (-XX) designation after each identifies the gap between city ranking and how much lower their MSA ranking is. To be fair, many of these cities have CSA's that would pull their two ranks closer together: Jacksonville (-27), Memphis (-22), San Antonio (-21), San Jose (-21), Indianapolis (-20), Austin (-20), Charlotte (-15), Nashville (-13), Milwaukee (-13) & Louisville (-13).
A large number of cities are very small in comparison to their MSA's. In these cases, (+XX) after each city name expresses how much higher the MSA's rank in comparison to their central city population. For MSA's with more than one central city (like Miami/Ft. Lauderdale/West Palm Beach), only the largest city in the MSA is compared: Hartford (+154), Providence (+100), Salt Lake City (+79), Richmond (+60), Orlando (+53), Riverside (+47), Pittsburgh (+39), Birmingham (+36), Miami (+35), Tampa (+35), St Louis (+34), Cincinatti (+33), Minneapolis (+32), Atlanta (+22), Buffalo (+20), Washington DC (+19), Sacramento (+12), Boston (+10).
Cities whose delta in rankings falls between 6 and 9 places either + or - include: Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Clevelend, Kansas City, Oklahoma City & New Orleans
Sometimes CSA Tell the real ranking also as in Charlotte NC and Tampa Fl which would be over 4,000,000 but for some unknown reason they do not have a CSA while a city like Atlanta with just over 400,000 have a CSA that goes about 70 miles away into a city in another state that has nothing to at all to do with Atlanta, what kind of sense do that make, will someone tell me please.
Last edited by TC717; 03-20-2011 at 06:44 PM..
Reason: to fix mistake
Sometimes CSA Tell the real ranking also as in Charlotte NC and Tampa Fl which would be over 4,000,000 but for some unknown reason they do not have a CSA while a city like Atlanta with just over 400,000 have a CSA that goes about 70 miles away into a city in another state that has nothing to at all to do with Atlanta, what kind of sense do that make, will someone tell me please.
It's strictly, absolutely based on commuting patters and percentages: % of commuters from rural counties into close-in suburbs, or the center city, or between suburban counties/towns. If the % is above a certain theshold, it goes into the CSA or MSA.
Charlotte does have a CSA, which stretches as far N-S as Statesville-to-Chester (about 100 miles, at least half of which is rural), and about the same distance E-W (Wadesboro-to-Kings Mountain). Charlotte's CSA is a bit over 2 million.
With Atlanta, if commuters are coming out of some county in E Alabama, then they do have something to do with Atlanta, and thus, they go into the CSA.
There are strict numbers-based criterion for what goes in and what doesn't. It's not improvised by flipping through a road atlas.
There are exceptionally rare examples: I could not give a source/citation, but I remember reading around 7 years ago that some Texas MSAs were combined and hyphenated for political / funding reasons, and that at least one of the hyphenated MSAs (now CSA) in NC was split in spite of commuting patterns because CofCommerce types appealed to the census bureau (and thought that having their own MSA would increase the profile of the city in question). I couldn't give sources at this late date on that, and in any case, such examples would be extremely rare.
It's strictly, absolutely based on commuting patters and percentages: % of commuters from rural counties into close-in suburbs, or the center city, or between suburban counties/towns. If the % is above a certain theshold, it goes into the CSA or MSA.
Charlotte does have a CSA, which stretches as far N-S as Statesville-to-Chester (about 100 miles, at least half of which is rural), and about the same distance E-W (Wadesboro-to-Kings Mountain). Charlotte's CSA is a bit over 2 million.
With Atlanta, if commuters are coming out of some county in E Alabama, then they do have something to do with Atlanta, and thus, they go into the CSA.
There are strict numbers-based criterion for what goes in and what doesn't. It's not improvised by flipping through a road atlas.
There are exceptionally rare examples: I could not give a source/citation, but I remember reading around 7 years ago that some Texas MSAs were combined and hyphenated for political / funding reasons, and that at least one of the hyphenated MSAs (now CSA) in NC was split in spite of commuting patterns because CofCommerce types appealed to the census bureau (and thought that having their own MSA would increase the profile of the city in question). I couldn't give sources at this late date on that, and in any case, such examples would be extremely rare.
I am correct in assuming that this one case is Durham? If so, do you think the split fufilled its intention?
That would be correct, and I can't corroborate that - this is something that I recall running across in a newspaper years ago, and I couldn't say what newspaper, at this point.
My opinion would be that it didn't - not in the most conventional of senses (like pulling in an HQ or a sports team or the more predictable kinds of things hometown boosters tend to aim for), although to be fair I have seen a few interesting bits of Durham-in-the-national-press (Durham, and not Raleigh-Durham, or Chapel Hill): a cover story in Bon Appetit about Durham being one of the best cities for foodies in the US, a cover story in Out Magazine about Durham being the best under-the-radar city for gay couples (it was pitched as a hip, and affordable alternative to Chapel Hill), and a few others. Those two stood out - they were long and detailed features written by some outsider who really did their homework. The Bon Appetit feature got into Chapel Hill and Carrboro as well - and apart from eateries, it got deeply into the locavore movement, co-ops, organic farming in the area (this IS apparently a Southeastern hotbed of it), local chefs using locally grown ingredients, etc. So in a way, maybe it did - if so the MSA has sold it's quirks and unique elements, rather than the usual things.
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