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Many major cities rest near the borders of other states and most of the time the metro area population is concentrated in state that the city is located in. However, the metro areas of cities such as New York and Kansas City to name a few have a large population across state lines in the states of New Jersey and Kansas respectively. Why do you think that is? And what are some other metro areas that have a substantial amount of residents located in multiple states?
Chicago has around 165,000 in Wisconsin, although they tend to bleed up into the Milwaukee area so it's not clear cut.
There's also around 750,000 people across the border in Indiana. My friend from northwest Indiana talks about going home to his family and people act like he's going to Michigan or Ohio or something. He always has to yell - I'M 20 MILES FROM DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, I GREW UP IN THE SUBURBS.
You have 170,000 people in Iowa and around 200,000 people in Illinois with no solid "downtown" between the two side of the river. Two of the cities are in Iowa facing the other two cities across in Illinois. I think Iowa has managed to pull away though as far as growing faster, being the "nicer" side, etc.
I know many cities have suburbs in other states, but I mean more concentrated population centers. For example, the Illinois side of the St. Louis area has about 550,000 residents living in the metro area. This number is fairly large, but compared to the 1.9 million or so living on the Missouri side, this number seems tiny. Kansas City on the other hand is more balanced with around 600,000 living on the Kansas side and 1.1 million or so living on the Missouri side, the ratio is much smaller. I was wondering why some metro areas develop in this way.
Because historically, cities developed on water, which often also served as convenient boundaries for state lines.
Also, state lines do not correspond with culture, so some suburbs may choose to identify more with the core cities rather than their states.
Also when you have big cities close to the border, people will flock around to wherever its cheapest/affordable, better schools or have "better" (lower) taxes.
Vancouver, WA is a suburb of PDX... My husband grew up there and said it used to be that if you were a resident of WA and worked in OR, you didn't have to pay OR income taxes (since WA has no income tax). Evidently too many people took upon that and made the move to Vancouver, Wa that OR changed its set-up. Now a WA resident working in OR has to pay OR income tax (though at a different rate than an OR resident). There are people who are still moving anyways because A.) Income tax isn't as high B.) Vancouver generally has better schools than Portland and C.) Property taxes are usually less than in OR.
Memphis has several suburbs in Mississippi and a couple in Arkansas. Southaven (pop 48,982), Olive Branch (pop 33,484), and Horn Lake (population 26,066) are in DeSoto County, MS (which is the largest suburban county of the Memphis metro). West Memphis (pop 26,245) is right across the Mississppi River in Arkansas.
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