What is the the Greater Philly Metro Area? (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh: real estate, home)

[solibs]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Once again, the only reason Mercer County is part of the New York CSA and not the Philadelphia CSA is because the Federal Government made the switch to give Federal employees working in Mercer County a backdoor pay raise.

Mercer might be part of NY for federal statistical purposes but for federal Metropolitan Planning purposes Mercer is part of the Delaware Valley. the DVRPC is headquartered on Independence Mall.

I think way too much hay is made of "extreme commuters". When you have 5% or less of a local workforce commuting to some far off city it doesn't mean that city has a lot of influence in daily life or that people spend much time at all thinking about that city.

I grew up about half way between NYC and Philly and with the exception of sporting events and cultural visits I rarely thought much about either place until I moved back to the area from down south.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by solibs

Mercer might be part of NY for federal statistical purposes but for federal Metropolitan Planning purposes Mercer is part of the Delaware Valley. the DVRPC is headquartered on Independence Mall.

I think way too much hay is made of "extreme commuters". When you have 5% or less of a local workforce commuting to some far off city it doesn't mean that city has a lot of influence in daily life or that people spend much time at all thinking about that city.

I grew up about half way between NYC and Philly and with the exception of sporting events and cultural visits I rarely thought much about either place until I moved back to the area from down south.

Thanks for the additional data point to back up my own point about the real reason for the switch; however:

--I believe that the threshold for commuters from a given county is higher than 5 percent - 15 percent, for some reason, sticks into my head

--they don't have to commute into the core city in order for the county to be included into a given MSA/CSA. In the instance of Mercer County, for example, a Princeton Township resident who works at the Rutgers main campus or Johnson & Johnson HQ -- both in New Brunswick in the county next door -- would count as commuters to the New York CSA, of which Middlesex County is a part.

You are aware that Princeton University is where it is because the site was halfway between NYC and Philly, right?

[rainrock]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

Pssst - We don't want to be connected to Philly.

I can understand wanting the Lehigh Valley to maintain its own identity even if it means leading an obscure, trivial, wee-like existence.

[TheCity]

Originally Posted by rainrock

I can understand wanting the Lehigh Valley to maintain its own identity even if it means leading an obscure, trivial, wee-like existence.

Lehigh Valley is an excellent suburb of Philadelphia to live. There is no need to attack random places within PA.

Also, I believe the Lehigh Valley area should be included into the Philadelphia metro. Philly is not going to take counties or towns away from the NYC metro in central NJ.

[rainrock]

Originally Posted by TheCity

Lehigh Valley is an excellent suburb of Philadelphia to live. There is no need to attack random places within PA.

Also, I believe the Lehigh Valley area should be included into the Philadelphia metro. Philly is not going to take counties or towns away from the NYC metro in central NJ.

Attack? Just some playful return ribbing. Nothing more.

[toobusytoday]

No offense taken The Lehigh Valley is NOT a Philadelphia suburb! We're an hour north of Philadelphia and have our very own city's of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, thank you very much.

[rainrock]

Originally Posted by TheCity

Lehigh Valley is an excellent suburb of Philadelphia to live. There is no need to attack random places within PA.

Also, I believe the Lehigh Valley area should be included into the Philadelphia metro. Philly is not going to take counties or towns away from the NYC metro in central NJ.

I dont have a problem with the Lehigh Valley not being part of Philadlephias CMSA eventhough there is a fairly close bonding between Bucks,Montgomery,Northampton,Lehigh.

What I do have a problem with is Philadlephia's metro size dropping in national rankings to metroes that are aloowed to expand 2x the size of Philadlephias. If Washington-Bal metro can span 150 rural miles from N to S, I dont see why Philadlephia is limited to 1/ 2 of that- Newark Del to Montgmery countys northern border.

I agree that Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley are 2 seperate independent regions but so are Central Va, Northern Md,WVA yet they are all included as 1 CSMA.

Id like to see the CMSA disbanded altogether. It gives a false overinflated impression of a region imo.

[FindingZen]

Originally Posted by rainrock

What I do have a problem with is Philadlephia's metro size dropping in national rankings to metroes that are aloowed to expand 2x the size of Philadlephias. If Washington-Bal metro can span 150 rural miles from N to S, I dont see why Philadlephia is limited to 1/ 2 of that- Newark Del to Montgmery countys northern border.

I agree that Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley are 2 seperate independent regions but so are Central Va, Northern Md,WVA yet they are all included as 1 CSMA.

Id like to see the CMSA disbanded altogether. It gives a false overinflated impression of a region imo.

I can't comment on the Baltimore side of things but I'm surprised that the Washington end includes Central VA unless we have two definitions of it. I can see up to five Northern Virginia counties (Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania) being included, the latter two being absorbed recently due to sprawl/cost-of-living issues. But I'd be surprised if anything beyond that was included.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by rainrock

I dont have a problem with the Lehigh Valley not being part of Philadlephias CMSA eventhough there is a fairly close bonding between Bucks,Montgomery,Northampton,Lehigh.

What I do have a problem with is Philadlephia's metro size dropping in national rankings to metroes that are aloowed to expand 2x the size of Philadlephias. If Washington-Bal metro can span 150 rural miles from N to S, I dont see why Philadlephia is limited to 1/ 2 of that- Newark Del to Montgmery countys northern border.

I agree that Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley are 2 seperate independent regions but so are Central Va, Northern Md,WVA yet they are all included as 1 CSMA.

Id like to see the CMSA disbanded altogether. It gives a false overinflated impression of a region imo.

Keep in mind that the Federal Government's CSA is actually pretty close, though not identical by a long shot, to the advertising industry's DMA (Dominant Market Area, formerly known as ADI - Area of Dominant Influence). A DMA represents the territory in which a given city's broadcast television stations are most often watched. I don't know whether these have evolved with the spread of cable TV, which jumbles things up a bit, but I think they are still largely drawn according to Big Four network affiliations; thus, the Lehigh Valley, while having its own metropolitan centers and a different commutershed from the neighboring Philadelphia region, would fall into the Philadelphia DMA because it has no commercial network-affiliated TV stations (it has a very fine PBS outlet, WLVT Channel 39, and an independent UHF station, WFMZ TV 69, which is the region's only commercial station with a local broadcast newscast IIRC).

In that light, it is worth noting that no New York TV station maintains a Mercer County bureau, while Philadelphia's WPVI (6ABC) does.

Edited to add: I do think that CSAs serve a useful purpose -- they indicate metropolitan regions that actually contain multiple interconnected metropolitan centers, much as Philadelphia, Wilmington, Trenton and Atlantic City are interconnected, or Boston, Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, and Haverhill -- and arguably even Providence and Worcester, neither of which are part of the Boston CSA IIRC.

[CHIP72]

The Lehigh Valley is a separate metro area from Philadelphia and always will be IMO, regardless how it is classified. However, the Lehigh Valley has pretty much always had a close interaction with the Philadelphia area (and to a lesser degree the New York area as well). Regardless of how the smaller metropolitan areas in or on the edge of Megalopolis are classified, pretty much all of those areas have fairly close relationships with the larger cities that they are closest to.