Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
While we wait for Godot, here's a history of the top 50 MSAs by changes from 1950-2020. The year beside is the year of the OMB bulletin effectuating the change in delineation. A (-) means it was removed that Census year.
Can't rep you but really good work!
2003 was when the term "Combined Statistical Area" became a thing - and it's definitely interesting to see how some MSAs were separated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ClevelandBrown
+1 Manitopiaaa
What I find interesting is that the most debated MSA mergers are SF/SJ, LA/Riverside, Cleveland/Akron, Raleigh/Durham, Detroit/Ann Arbor, Denver/Boulder and Boston/Worcester.
In every single case above, those were combined at one point until 2003, the year every single one of those were split apart.
Out of these, are there any where the two have actually grown further apart in the last 20 years?
Maybe SF/SJ and that's only because SJ has become an economic powerhouse in that span, but even then the Bay Area runs seamlessly from the SF peninsula (SF MSA) to South Bay (SJ MSA) and then East Bay (back to the SF MSA). The rest, IMO, have undoubtedly grown closer.
Census Bureau created the concept of "Combined Statistical Area" in 2003 and it shows that how many of the separated MSAs are so debated.
Not on that list? Baltimore-Washington CSA - the two were never combined until they create CSAs in 2003. Just to show how the B-W CSA is also just as debated on C-D as SF-SJ, Raleigh/Durham, LA-Inland Empire, etc.
2003 was when the term "Combined Statistical Area" became a thing - and it's definitely interesting to see how some MSAs were separated.
2003 was an absolute hack job by statisticians that made no sense. Almost all metro's over 3 million got split up in to multiple smaller statistical areas. Even smaller metros were parted out. For some reason I remember Oakland and Macomb Counties being separated into their own metro from Detroit itself which was absurd. IIRC the "metropolitan divisions" were created in 2013 to correct this nonsense.
2003 was an absolute hack job by statisticians that made no sense. Almost all metro's over 3 million got split up in to multiple smaller statistical areas. Even smaller metros were parted out. For some reason I remember Oakland and Macomb Counties being separated into their own metro from Detroit itself which was absurd. IIRC the "metropolitan divisions" were created in 2013 to correct this nonsense.
I wonder if expanding the metropolitan divisions is on the table. Seems like a good compromise for the aforementioned areas.
Using Cleveland-Akron. Cleveland gets its bordering 7-county area back as a singular entity, but Akron (which is overwhelmingly against being lumped with Cleveland) would retain some status as a standalone city by being a metro division, which would have the same population as its MSA does now.
But what makes too much sense is usually not what happens.
I would love to see New York and Philadelphia finally combine into a single CSA. The population would reach over 30 million people. It would be by far the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Crazy that Nassau and Suffolk were actually removed from the NYC MSA in 1972, before being added back in 1983. They would've been Riverside-style MSAs, without any real central city. I didn't even realize there were any appreciable number of white-collar jobs on Long Island.
Also that the San Francisco MSA had more counties in 1950 than it does today.
I would love to see New York and Philadelphia finally combine into a single CSA. The population would reach over 30 million people. It would be by far the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
No lol. They would still be smaller than the CSA equivalents of Mexico City & São Paulo.
Megalopolis of Central Mexico has 30.8 million people while São Paulo macrometropolis has 34.5 million
Crazy that Nassau and Suffolk were actually removed from the NYC MSA in 1972, before being added back in 1983. They would've been Riverside-style MSAs, without any real central city. I didn't even realize there were any appreciable number of white-collar jobs on Long Island.
Also that the San Francisco MSA had more counties in 1950 than it does today.
The requirements change all the time tho. In 1990, SF and Oakland were separate as were NY and Newark, as were many others.
2003 was when the term "Combined Statistical Area" became a thing - and it's definitely interesting to see how some MSAs were separated.
Census Bureau created the concept of "Combined Statistical Area" in 2003 and it shows that how many of the separated MSAs are so debated.
Not on that list? Baltimore-Washington CSA - the two were never combined until they create CSAs in 2003. Just to show how the B-W CSA is also just as debated on C-D as SF-SJ, Raleigh/Durham, LA-Inland Empire, etc.
However, prior to CSAs, they were called CMSAs: Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas
The reason why they removed the 'M' from CSA is because in 2003, Micropolitan Areas 'became a thing' and so there would be 2 M's, Metro and Micro, I think the OMB thought people would understand that statistical areas can be either, however they probably didnt think that removing the M would make a bunch of folks on the internet question the validity of CSAs since they never questioned CMSAs prior. Suddenly CSAs were judged as ploys by some areas of the country to inflate their importance, which is laughable.
However, prior to CSAs, they were called CMSAs: Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas
The reason why they removed the 'M' from CSA is because in 2003, Micropolitan Areas 'became a thing' and so there would be 2 M's, Metro and Micro, I think the OMB thought people would understand that statistical areas can be either, however they probably didnt think that removing the M would make a bunch of folks on the internet question the validity of CSAs since they never questioned CMSAs prior. Suddenly CSAs were judged as ploys by some areas of the country to inflate their importance, which is laughable.
But I digress.
Remember, back then there weren’t nearly as many CMSAs as there are CSAs now. So when the census bureau released the list of the largest metro areas, it was the CMSAs and MSAs together on the same list. Since 2003, CSAs and MSAs are on separate lists. This was probably done to make cities like Baltimore and Akron happy. In other words, it’s all politics!!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
