Are there any other states that should follow Connecticut's lead and change their county equivalents? (fit in, neighborhood)

[manitopiaaa]

If you didn't know, beginning later this year Connecticut will no longer use counties in any Census-related calculation. Which means that Fairfield County, Hartford County, etc. functionally cease to exist as even statistical entities (county governments were long abolished)

Here are the new ones:



The end result of this is that it could become much easier for "Western Connecticut" to now join the New York MSA. Naugatuck Valley, now separated into 4 counties, will become 1 of the 9 county-equivalents, with 450,376 people in its own right.

Here are the 9 new regions with 2020 Census populations:

• Capitol: 976,248 people (Anchor City: Hartford)
• Greater Bridgeport: 325,778 people (Anchor City: Bridgeport)
• Lower Connecticut River Valley: 174,225 people (Anchor City: Middletown)
• Naugatuck Valley: 450,376 people (Anchor City: Waterbury)
• Northeastern Connecticut: 95,348 people (Anchor City: Plainfield?)
• Northwest Hills: 112,503 people (Anchor City: Torrington)
• South Central Connecticut: 570,487 (Anchor City: New Haven)
• Southeastern Connecticut: 280,430 (Anchor City: New London)
• Western Connecticut: 620,549 people (Anchor City: Stamford)

Waterbury comes out the clear winner, and Bridgeport the clear loser (it loses its own metro area of 960,000 people, and now leads an area of only 326,000). Stamford if it doesn't get subsumed by New York MSA now has its own metro area of 621,000 people.

I'm surprised Danbury didn't get its own region since Western Connecticut is a bit oddly shaped now. But otherwise, it's a split that gives each economic area its own county-equivalent.

What are some states that should follow this approach because their county lines are so botched?

For me:

• Arizona: Pinal County is too big at this point and all of it being in Phoenix MSA is depriving Tucson of lots of people in booming towns like Saddlebrooke which are on the extreme Southeast end of the county. As Tucson's growth moves north, all of these suburbs will be captured as Phoenix Metro Area gains just because of the Pinal boundaries.
  
• California: Way too many counties that don't really respect economic areas. Riverside County should be treated as 3+ counties since Palm Springs is so far from the Los Angeles CSA core. I also think Southwest Riverside would be in San Diego's CSA if that County didn't have such weird borders. Los Angeles County north of the mountains should be its own separate entity, as should San Bernardino north (Victorville/Hesperia/Apple Valley). Santa Barbara County is really two areas shotgun-weddinged together (Santa Barbara in the far east and Santa Maria in the far west, more than 60 minutes away through rural areas). Alameda/Contra Costa are also functionally split by the mountains, so the current east-west divide between the two should probably be north-south.
  
• Florida: A place like Polk County is now ripped between Orlando and Tampa's spheres of influence. But because of the current split in commuting it qualifies to be in neither county. So we get these weird moments where Polk County is in the Tampa Media Market and the Orlando CSA. Just chop it in half
  
• Maryland: Anne Arundel/Howard are not divided at the right spot. There are hundreds of thousands of people in these two counties who orient toward DC but are all captured as Baltimore metro residents. Places like Southern Anne Arundel are almost entirely DC commuters, yet are "Baltimore" residents. There needs to be a Connecticut-style split in Maryland to reflect this.
  
• New Jersey: Trenton County is only its own metro area because New York/Philadelphia split the interchange of outcommers. Surgically make Trenton, Hamilton and Ewing their own statistical entity and suddenly that half joins the Philadelphia MSA and the other joins the New York MSA.

[Boston Shudra]

Massachusetts is a very obvious one. Similarly to CT, we haven’t had real county government in decades.

[The_Quiet_One]

I think this could really only work in states with either no county governments/administrations (CT and RI) or states with very strong town/township governments (so basically the Northeast). There are so many unincorporated areas in states like Maryland and Virginia, and they're tied fully to their counties.

[mhays25]

In Washington, counties play a big role in land use. Seattle-area counties are huge, including a lot of protected land on the edges of town that might otherwise be developed. This land is only protected because of urban electorates. It would be a disaster if we split things up.

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

• Arizona: Pinal County is too big at this point and all of it being in Phoenix MSA is depriving Tucson of lots of people in booming towns like Saddlebrooke which are on the extreme Southeast end of the county. As Tucson's growth moves north, all of these suburbs will be captured as Phoenix Metro Area gains just because of the Pinal boundaries.
  
• California: Way too many counties that don't really respect economic areas. Riverside County should be treated as 3+ counties since Palm Springs is so far from the Los Angeles CSA core. I also think Southwest Riverside would be in San Diego's CSA if that County didn't have such weird borders. Los Angeles County north of the mountains should be its own separate entity, as should San Bernardino north (Victorville/Hesperia/Apple Valley). Santa Barbara County is really two areas shotgun-weddinged together (Santa Barbara in the far east and Santa Maria in the far west, more than 60 minutes away through rural areas). Alameda/Contra Costa are also functionally split by the mountains, so the current east-west divide between the two should probably be north-south.

Totally agree with these. The Castro Valley part of Alameda/Contra Costa feels like a totally different region of the metro area from the inner "East Bay".

I'd add Washington. King County covers such a diverse range of areas, and all of the western Cascades counties have parts in the foothills/mountains that feel very remote from the suburbanized Seattle parts.

I would redesign the Seattle area with:
- King County: just Seattle + inner-ring suburbs (Shoreline, Renton, White Center down to Federal Way)
- "Newcastle County": the upper-income, tech-centric Eastside suburbs (Bellevue, Redmond out to Issaquah)
- "Snoqualmie County": far east suburbs (Snoqualmie, North Bend, Tanner) and adjoining mountain areas

All would still be in the Seattle MSA, but statistics like income, education, election votes would stop lumping together these very different areas.

Also, the east-west orientation of the Olympic Peninsula counties is strange if one has ever been there. Jefferson County includes quaint seaside towns like Port Townsend on the east peninsula, then skips over the Olympic Mountains to some Indian reservations on the west peninsula, like 3 hours away. All the towns in between are Clallam County. They should be oriented north-south.

[edit: well this is if it weren't for the land use thing mhays mentioned]

[btownboss4]

Does anyone guess if this keeps Hartford around 1,150,000 (Capital+Lower Valley)or will completely cut out its outer suburbs and bring it down to 976,000?

It’s also possible that New Haven drops out of the NYC CSA if eastern New Haven County gets cut out of New Haven County.

I do find it interesting because how counties currently function you’re often welding together two areas that act differently and putting the whole thing into one category

[BostonBornMassMade]

I don’t know if this will actually help CT- but the obvious answer is Massachusetts.

[manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by btownboss4

Does anyone guess if this keeps Hartford around 1,150,000 (Capital+Lower Valley)or will completely cut out its outer suburbs and bring it down to 976,000?

It’s also possible that New Haven drops out of the NYC CSA if eastern New Haven County gets cut out of New Haven County.

I do find it interesting because how counties currently function you’re often welding together two areas that act differently and putting the whole thing into one category

Hartford and Tolland are both core counties anyway according to OMB Bulletin 20-01. So consolidating them as one county wouldn't really matter in that case since Census already pools them anyway for the purposes of calculating commuter interchange.

I suppose there's a very slim chance that those new municipalities added to Lower Valley push it below the MSA threshhold but Lyme and Old Lyme are so small I doubt there's much of a hit to the interchange numbers.

[manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

I don’t know if this will actually help CT- but the obvious answer is Massachusetts.

Yes, completely forgot about Mass. Middlesex County in particular is such an oddball entity, with two "county seats" of Lowell and Cambridge that couldn't be further apart in terms of culture, wealth and demographics if they tried.

The parts of Middlesex inside the I-95 loop should be their own statistical area.

[Prickly Pear]

If you want my honest opinion Phoenix never should have sprawled into Pinal to begin with. From Downtown Phoenix, the pinal County border is approximately 40 miles away to Queen Creek border. To put that in perspective, that’s about the entire length of Rhode Island’s western border. But when you factor in Phoenix also sprawls away from Pinal also that distance (DT Phoenix to the Vistancia neighborhood in Peoria AZ to the northwest is also 40 miles) we are talking about multiple Rhode Islands that can fit into Phoenix’s sprawl BEFORE Pinal county.

Arizona’s counties are very large and they have to be in order to regulate the vast swathes of open desert that we have. Maricopa County is the size of NJ and it’s mostly desert and mountain ranges. For the purposes of say the Census I’m not opposed to it on splitting MSAs but the counties need to be large and awkward so they can still get some funding from populated areas to oversee the emptiness of most of the state