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Should the NYC and Philly metro areas be merged into one CSA now that commuter thresholds have been reached? Why or why not?
A friend of mine is a Flyer fan and goes down to Philadelphia a couple times a year to see them play. When I was in 6th grade, we took a one day school bus trip down to Philadelphia. That is how close New York and Philadelphia are.
Having said that, IMO the answer to your question is NO. The vast majority of Philadelphia and New York area residents are NOT commuting everyday to the other city's metro.
Certainly from the viewpoint of New York City and also its northeastern suburbs (Hudson Valley, Connecticut and Long Island) very few are commuting to Philadelphia. You might get more from Northern New Jersey and even then it is probably a tiny minority. Only in Central New Jersey and the Allentown area of Pennsylvania are there a reasonable amount of people commuting to Philadelphia.
I suspect its the same situation for Philadelphia and its suburbs regarding commuting to the NYC area.
^^^^^
It's not uncommon to find people that live in Philly suburbs and commute to NYC. Mostly the NJ suburbs and the northern PA suburbs. There are even people that live in Philly itself and work in NYC.
Then what are CSAs for, if not to measure commuting into a core metro (and thus also measuring feasible commutes)? If 15% of commuters in an adjacent metro commute into an MSA, it becomes a CSA. And no one would commute into an adjacent metro if it wasn't feasible to begin with, from a time, distance and monetary perspective. CSAs represent the commuting population, first and foremost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjlo
CSA is the Unicorn of population metrics. It means virtually nothing in almost every case. Still for some reason I don't hate it as much as when people use city-pop. Sometime between 1993 and 2003 a statistician somewhere at the census bureau thought it was noteworthy that some counties have at least 15% but not 25% of their workforce commuting into a core metro. This was followed by homers on City-Data finding a new way to claim superiority and boost their city.
New York and Philly are 90 miles apart downtown to downtown. I don't see a scenario where they actually ever cross that commuting thresh hold. Even New York doesn't have enough gravity to pull 15% of Philly's commuters. I'd be surprised if it's above 10%. The subject matter of this poll is somewhat inane as if CSA's are decided by popular vote and not raw data.
Yes to your first paragraph and overall point, but they already technically do meet the requirements, due to Mercer (NYC) and Burlington (Philly) counties. But again, it's purely a technicality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexxxcblac
Wow !
Phoenix dropping Philadelphia from 5th to 6th largest city in America is having a devastating impact on some Philadelphians.
Now you're talking about merging with NYC huh...
Desperate times produce desperate measures I guess.
Dude, what are you talking about? This thread was created before the Census estimates even came out. And Phoenix is now officially larger than Philly in city proper. Whoop dee do. It's fairly meaningless as Phoenix city proper is over 3x as large as Philly. From an urban and metro perspective, there is no comparison. The below gif says it all.
The CSA does have some meaning. San Jose and San Francisco do share commuting and a media market for TV. There is no reason why Washington and Baltimore are not the same metro area. They should also be one media market as you can easily catch each other TV stations over the air. Even Providence and Boston. The latter two are divided only for political reasons.
San Jose only had 95,000 people in the 50s when TV media markets were defined or it'd easily be it's own media market for TV.
Philly and NY are used by travelers for air travel as well. Even in Chicago you see northern suburbanites flying to and from Mitchell in Milwaukee which is an easy coach bus ride that is longer in distance but shorter in time due to traffic. I've done it before.
The real problem is metro areas are based on counties. Does anyone really think someone living in Nevada next to the border of Idaho is in the Reno metro area? It is. Same with someone in California living next to Nevada is in the San Bernardino Metro area or the LA CSA.
The census urban area is a better start than metro areas and really with computers being what they are, they could be done by census blocks or zip codes now for better accuracy.
Soon Baltimore/Washington will overtake Chicago in CSA and having lived in both cities I can tell you this is right. The area is integrated enough to be one and it feels more aligned that LaPorte In (leaning towards Michigan and South Bend) and Kenosha which is part of Milwaukee media market.
Then what are CSAs for, if not to measure commuting into a core metro (and thus also measuring feasible commutes)? If 15% of commuters in an adjacent metro commute into an MSA, it becomes a CSA. And no one would commute into an adjacent metro if it wasn't feasible to begin with, from a time, distance and monetary perspective. CSAs represent the commuting population, first and foremost.
The key word there is core. The point is not to measure feasibility of commuting from one extreme end to the other (like the Dover to New Haven example you posted in the post I replied to). Although, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a dozen or so people making that commute.
The point of the CSA is to identify broader economic ties between adjacent areas, and commuting data are used as a proxy to indicate an economic relationship.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lammius
The key word there is core. The point is not to measure feasibility of commuting from one extreme end to the other (like the Dover to New Haven example you posted in the post I replied to). Although, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a dozen or so people making that commute.
The point of the CSA is to identify broader economic ties between adjacent areas, and commuting data are used as a proxy to indicate an economic relationship.
As a resident of metro-Philly, I say no. While Central Jersey is a battleground of sorts, the rest of the metros are too distinct. Plus, while CSAs are inflated to begin with, they ARE supposed to represent feasible commutes within a metro. Dover to Philadelphia, a 70 mile, 75 minute drive? Completely doable on a daily basis. Dover to New Haven, CT, a 4 hour, 250 mile drive? Lol.
As representative of Metro NYC area we don't accept Philly as our region like to pass this down to Upstate New York
Last edited by BPt111; 05-30-2017 at 08:14 AM..
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