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.
Here are the new MSA numbers based on the updated metropolitan delineations:
Updated MSAs (4 million plus)
New York MSA: 19,557,311
Los Angeles MSA: 12,872,322
Chicago MSA: 9,274,200
Dallas MSA: 7,943,685
Houston MSA: 7,368,466
Washington MSA: 6,265,183
Philadelphia MSA: 6,241,163
Atlanta MSA: 6,237,435
Miami MSA: 6,139,330
Phoenix MSA: 5,015,678
Boston MSA: 4,900,550
Riverside MSA: 4,667,558
San Francisco MSA: 4,579,599
Detroit MSA: 4,345,761
Seattle MSA: 4,034,248
Quick Takeaways: The 6 million metros are very close in population. Only 126,000 people separate Miami and Washington. Seattle finally entered the 4 million club. Dallas will hit 8 million next year. Boston and San Francisco may align more with their CSA population or at least some of it because the MSA population feels too small for those two cities.
Spent a lot of time in the Bay Area ( a month). Mostly south Bay and East Bay with a little in SF. Never went to the North.
I feel both Boston and SF seem right (Boston feels too big) they're just places with outsized economies and cultural influence.
Urban areas that abut each other don’t make sense to me. Concord and Charlotte’s UA share a miles-long border without any room between them. Does Concord keep a separate UA simply for historical reasons?
UA's make no practical sense to me for reasons I shared in the last thread.
Boston's UA includes somewhere 74 miles away in cow country. But excludes 2/3 towns 12 miles away.
So you think that Rochester NH (in the Boston MSA) is a more reasonable addition to “metro Boston” than Mansfield MA (in the CSA but not the MSA)?
And you admit this knowing that Rochester is 76 miles from City Hall Plaza while Mansfield is 33 miles away?
So much of NH is included in the Boston MSA it's nuts to me. Wtf is a Rochester? Places like Easton..literally 13 miles from the border of Boston (Hyde Park) are not in the MSA though. Okay. Is anyone in easton like “yea I'm in the Providence area”...no.
UA's make no practical sense to me for reasons I shared in the last thread.
Boston's UA includes somewhere 74 miles away in cow country. But excludes 2/3 towns 12 miles away.
Lol. If UA makes no sense then CSA makes negative sense.
I think UA makes more sense than most others, but it's not a perfect metric.
What doesn't make sense is CSA with Orlando at 4.3M people and ahead of Minneapolis and Denver.
Even if MSA doesn't work for SF, the CSA doesn't either. SF may be bigger than 4M but it's not 9M either. Somewhere in between tells the true story.
DC isn't anywhere near 10M. Too much periphery.
Boston feels like a 6M metro, not 4M.
So you think that Rochester NH (in the Boston MSA) is a more reasonable addition to “metro Boston” than Mansfield MA (in the CSA but not the MSA)?
And you admit this knowing that Rochester is 76 miles from City Hall Plaza while Mansfield is 33 miles away?
Again this is because Counties too rough to accurately capture metros in areas with dense base populations. Mansfield isn’t in the Boston MSA not because it isn’t a Boston suburb but because New Bedford and Dartmouth aren’t and most of the county lives down there. In addition because All if Middlesex County is considered a “Boston commute” by the census bureau too much if NH is dragged into the Boston CSA and MSA. The OMB sees a Nashua to Chelmsford commute as equal to a Hooksett to Boston commute. Which it isn’t. It’s to the point where western Middlesex county isn’t even metro Boston despite a Pepperell, Townsend and Ashby being considered literally Boston by the OMB.
In the Midwest or Deep South you generally have a clean fade out from a major city to farmland where basically nobody lives so these issues don’t warp populations too much. California, the Northeast and Upper South do not have this luxury so metros are a mess. You have significant populations that have nothing to do with the central city and are straight up suburbs. Like by no means are Fredericksburg remotely connected to Aberdeen MD. But they get daisy chained together by county geographies into so region that doesn’t exist
Again this is why the 2013 Boston NECTA despite having like 100,000 net difference swapped nearly a million people in the County based MSA.
I think an intermediary above UA would be good--something that still uses census tracts as the basic unit, but can include non strictly contiguous parts to some extent if there is enough commute threshold and fills in "holes" when a UA surrounds tracts.
I think an intermediary above UA would be good--something that still uses census tracts as the basic unit, but can include non strictly contiguous parts to some extent if there is enough commute threshold and fills in "holes" when a UA surrounds tracts.
Honestly they just have to up the density threshold to ~2,000 ppsm. 1,000 leads to a lot of bloat in the east where the rural population density is too high
New York Lost Pike County, PA Chicago Lost Kenosha County, WI Houston Added San Jacinto County, TX Washington Lost Madison County, VA and Calvert County, MD Atlanta Traded Lamar County, GA for Lumpkin County, GA St. Louis Gained Crawford County, MO? Wording was weird Pittsburgh Gained Lawrence County, PA Cincinnati Lost Union County, IN Cleveland Gained Ashtabula County, OH Indianapolis Traded Putnam County, IN for Tipton County, IN Nashville Gained Hickman County, TN Virginia Beach Traded Southampton County, VA and Franklin city, VA for Surry County, VA Louisville Gained Meade County, KY and Nelson County, KY Memphis Gained Benton County, MS Birmingham Gained Walker County, AL Fresno Gained Madera County, CA Grand Rapids Gained Barry County, MI Rochester, NY Lost Yates County, NY New Orleans Lost St. Tammany Parish, LA Knoxville Gained Grainger County, TN Worcester Lost claims to Connecticut Ogden Lost Box Elder County, UT Jackson, MS Gained Scott County, MS Durham Lost Granville County, NC Toledo Lost Ottawa County, OH Reno Gained Lyon County, NV Lansing Lost Shiawassee County, MI Springfield, MA Lost Hampshire County, MA and Franklin County, MA Fort Wayne Gained Wells County, IN Wilmington, NC Gained Brunswick County, NC Waterbury, CT New MSA Corpus Christi Gained Aransas County, TX Youngstown Lost Mercer County, PA Asheville Lost Haywood County, NC Lafayette, LA Lost Iberia Parish, LA (bothers me aesethically) Mobile Lost Washington County, AL Fayettevile, NC Lost Harnett County, NC Myrtle Beach Lost Brunswick County, NC Spartanburg Gained Union County, SC Atlantic City Gained Cape May Connty, NJ Huntington Gained Lawrence County, KY Peoria Lost Fulton County, IL Lubbock Gained Cochran County, TX; Garza County, TX; and Hockley County, TX Waco Gained Bosque County, TX Sioux Falls Gained Rock County, MN Duluth Lost Lake County, MN Slidell New MSA from St. Tammany Parish, LA Evansville Lost Henderson County, KY Bend Gained Crook County, OR and Jefferson County, OR Lake Charles Gained Jefferson Davis Parish, LA Champaign Gained Ford County, IL Fort Smith Lost Franklin County, AR Monroe, LA Gained Richland Parish, LA Panama City Gained Washington County, FL California, MD Gained Calvert County, MD (Now called Lexington Park MSA) Charleston, WV Lost Jackson County, WV and Lincoln County, WV Joplin Gained Cherokee County, KS Auburn Gained Macon County, AL Blacksburg Gained Floyd County, VA La Crosse Gained Vernon County, WI Terre Haute Lost Parke County, IN Kenosha New MSA from Kenosha County, WI Amherst New MSA from Hampshire County, MA Traverse City Grew from micro into MSA Hattiesburg Lost Covington County, MS Rapid City Gained Custer County, SD Sioux City Lost Dixon County, NE Wausau Lost Lincoln County, WI Salisbury Lost Sussex County, DE and Worcester County, MD (my vote for most gutted MSA) Elizabethtown Lost Meade County, KY Missoula Gained Mineral County, MT Bozeman Grew from micro into MSA Morristown Lost Grainger County, TN San Angelo Lost Sterling County, TX Sandusky Grew from micro into MSA and gained Ottawa County, OH Owensboro Lost Hancock County, KY Pinehurst, NC Grew from micro into MSA Sumter Lost Clarendon County, SC Paducah Grew from micro into MSA and gained Carlisle County, KY Helena Grew from micro into MSA and gained Broadwater County, MT Pocatello Lost Power County, ID Minot, ND Grew from micro into MSA Eagle Pass, TX Grew from micro into MSA
No longer MSAs East Stroudsburg, PA now micro Madera absorbed by Fresno Carbondale, IL now micro New Bern, NC now micro Ocean City, NJ absorbed by Atlantic City Cumberland, MD now micro Pine Bluff, AR now micro Bloomsburg, PA now micro Danville, IL now micro
going to look at micros, but that'll be a bit longer: a lot more notable changes
Lol. If UA makes no sense then CSA makes negative sense.
I think UA makes more sense than most others, but it's not a perfect metric.
What doesn't make sense is CSA with Orlando at 4.3M people and ahead of Minneapolis and Denver.
Even if MSA doesn't work for SF, the CSA doesn't either. SF may be bigger than 4M but it's not 9M either. Somewhere in between tells the true story.
DC isn't anywhere near 10M. Too much periphery.
Boston feels like a 6M metro, not 4M.
It varies from place to place. SF in reality doesn’t operate as just SF and Oakland, the entire South Bay is interconnected and an inherent part of the Bay Area, so SF plus SJ is the right answer; it seems like the Census Bureau doesn’t have people out west or they’d have realized how mentally challenged it makes them look to have separated them out in the first place. But the right answer for one place doesn’t make it the right answer for every place.
It varies from place to place. SF in reality doesn’t operate as just SF and Oakland, the entire South Bay is interconnected and an inherent part of the Bay Area, so SF plus SJ is the right answer; it seems like the Census Bureau doesn’t have people out west or they’d have realized how mentally challenged it makes them look to have separated them out in the first place. But the right answer for one place doesn’t make it the right answer for every place.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to not consider Salinas a city 90 miles from SF as a SF suburb.
It’s so weird SF and DC are so desperate for status they pretend places 100 miles away are actually part of their city.
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.
