New 2013 MSA and CSA definitions.

[Chef]

It should be obvious by now that outside of California CSAs are not the true measure of a metro area. Remove the word "statistical" and you have "consolidated area" and metropolitan area". I think that should tell us what the Office of Management and Budget's intentions are. I would imagine that outside of internet nerdery these numbers are mostly used for regional planning, transportation and the like, and are aimed at being useful for that.

[Urbanguy]

CSAs are insane. It's looks like Salem has finally been added back to Portland but Albany & Corvallis? I don't think so -- I'd add them to Eugene before Portland.

[Quixote]

Glad to see the Bay Area is now firmly #5. Boston had no business being above San Francisco because its CSA includes places (like Manchester and Concord) that you could never feel comfortable labeling as "Boston metro." I've been to Concord before (overnight stay while driving from Boston to Montreal) and it feels very detached from Boston. On the other hand, SF to SJ is seamless and you feel like you're in a densely populated metro area. You could even make the case for the Bay Area over Bal/Wash.

[blade_bltz]

^ Have you ever been to Stockton? No one could ever claim with a straight face that it "feels" like part of the densely populated metropolitan Bay Area.

[BnaBreaker]

Originally Posted by simms3_redux

Jacksonville FL became a CSA for the first time. 2010 numbers. Would be interested to see how it stacks up against Nashville, Louisville, Birmingham, Memphis, Richmond, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Hartford, etc (I think Nashville is actually in a higher/larger league, but it wasn't too long ago that it was the same size)

Jacksonville MSA
Duval County - 864,263 - 774 sq. mi. - 1,117 ppsm
St. Johns County - 190,039 - 609 sq. mi. - 312 ppsm
Clay County - 190,895 - 601 sq. mi. - 318ppsm
Nassau County - 73,314 - 652 sq. mi. - 112ppsm
Baker County - 27,115 - 585 sq. mi. - 46ppsm

Subtotal - 1,345,626 - 3,221 sq. mi. - 418ppsm

Palatka Micropolitan Statistical Area
Putnam County - 74,364 - 722 sq. mi. - 103ppsm

St. Mary's, GA Micropolitan Statistical Area
Camden County - 50,513 - 630 sq. mi. - 80ppsm

TOTAL - 1,470,503 - 4,573 sq. mi. - 322ppsm

Nashville's CSA currently stands at 1.82 million, so Jax isn't very far off at all!

[sentinel]

Originally Posted by Rail Claimore

DC broke 9 mil, Philly broke 7, and DFW is about to break it (if it hasn't already with 2012 numbers)? Damn... DC just might pass Chicago by the next census.

Maybe, maybe not. By then, I wouldn't be surprised if CHI and Milwaukee were counted as part of the same CSA based on this weird, confounding release. Seriously, I consider myself relatively smart but even I can't figure the logic behind this cotton-pickin list.

[softee]

Originally Posted by jcchii

let's look forward to the canadians drawing theirs so Toronto has 15,000,000

Fifteen million, no. Nine million, yesireebob.

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Originally Posted by themaguffin

I think that's part of the problem.... people are making CSAs as = to cities.

Obviously city populations are useless beyond relevant topics regarding issues within the city or related to it and its surroundings so metro definitions more or less work. There are some metros where other cities are truly part of a greater metro, but for a lot of CSAs, there just enough traffic to warrant inclusion and it's misleading to think that a college town or other distant town is embedded into the the core larger city.

CSAs work when considering larger regions as business does with its market or trade area definitions, but often not for judging how "big" a city is....

I understand that, but I'm not equating it as part of Birmingham's core, but more as part of the larger commuting region (which is what I consider CSAs to be).

EDIT: Btw, does anyone know of a list of the new definitions ranked by population?

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

Glad to see the Bay Area is now firmly #5. Boston had no business being above San Francisco because its CSA includes places (like Manchester and Concord) that you could never feel comfortable labeling as "Boston metro." I've been to Concord before (overnight stay while driving from Boston to Montreal) and it feels very detached from Boston. On the other hand, SF to SJ is seamless and you feel like you're in a densely populated metro area. You could even make the case for the Bay Area over Bal/Wash.

Manchester is a lot more Boston than Stockton is San Fran. A whole lot more. Or Santa Rosa, for that matter. I won't argue that Greater Boston is larger than the greater Bay Area - but SF's CSA is just as ridiculous, if not more so, than Boston's.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by softee

Fifteen million, no. Nine million, yesireebob.

But with these new, expanded CSA boundaries looks like we'll need to stretch ours further as well...maybe west down to London and east to Belleville. That ought to give us a good 11 million.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's still a decent-sized gap between Baltimore and Philly, though.

And there's a huge gap between Boston and NYC. Past Hartford, there's basically nothing until you're near Worcester.

According to the Census, Cecil County is already part of the Philadelphia MSA. (A little bit of a stretch, I would say; from my experience, people in Elkton tend to commute to Newark, and people in Newark tend to commute to Wilmington, and people in the Wilmington area commute to Philadelphia, so Elkton and environs are part of the Philadelphia MSA.) Harford County is part of the Baltimore MSA. So statistically, the two metro areas touch each other, with the Susquehanna River being the only barrier on paper. In reality, I think the river and the tolls along I-95 are much bigger barriers to commuting than the Census would indicate.

[Urbanguy]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

But with these new, expanded CSA boundaries looks like we'll need to stretch ours further as well...maybe west down to London and east to Belleville. That ought to give us a good 11 million.

Heck the way some of these CSAs are being stretched in the US, you might as well include Windsor for equal comparison!

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Manchester is a lot more Boston than Stockton is San Fran. A whole lot more. Or Santa Rosa, for that matter.

As the crow flies, Stockton is about 15 miles east of where the eBART commuter railroad, currently under construction, will terminate in 2016. Additionally, two of the fastest-growing commuter railroads in the nation (ACE and the San Joaquins) connect downtown Stockton to the East Bay and South Bay. Stockton is also a major deep-water port because it connects to the San Francisco Bay. I'll agree it's not culturally part of the Bay Area, nor part of the traditional common perception here, but the OMB has added it to the SJ-SF-Oak CSA because it is apparently now a part of the Bay Area economically, with 18% of locals traveling to the Bay for work. That's not an insignificant number, and exceeds the 15% requirement. There's a reason this region is #1 in America for "mega-commutes."

As for the Boston CSA, I've had family in the fiercely independent-minded state of New Hampshire since before I was born--from Keene in the west to Dover in the east, and up north all the way to Wolfeboro (where I briefly lived). Manchester isn't on the radar of most "Massholes" the way Santa Rosa--the largest city in what's colloquially called "The North Bay"--is around here. I mean, it's literally defined by a name based upon and referring to its position within the rest of the larger Bay Area.

[SLO]

Originally Posted by blade_bltz

^ Have you ever been to Stockton? No one could ever claim with a straight face that it "feels" like part of the densely populated metropolitan Bay Area.

I wouldn't say it's culturally apart, but it's becoming more so. You mentioned density? The Stockton urban area is denser than half of the top 15 urban areas.

[599GTO]

Originally Posted by themaguffin

There are some metros where other cities are truly part of a greater metro, but for a lot of CSAs, there just enough traffic to warrant inclusion and it's misleading to think that a college town or other distant town is embedded into the the core larger city.

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

Glad to see the Bay Area is now firmly #5. Boston had no business being above San Francisco because its CSA includes places (like Manchester and Concord) that you could never feel comfortable labeling as "Boston metro." I've been to Concord before (overnight stay while driving from Boston to Montreal) and it feels very detached from Boston. On the other hand, SF to SJ is seamless and you feel like you're in a densely populated metro area. You could even make the case for the Bay Area over Bal/Wash.

Originally Posted by Chef

It should be obvious by now that outside of California CSAs are not the true measure of a metro area. Remove the word "statistical" and you have "consolidated area" and metropolitan area". I think that should tell us what the Office of Management and Budget's intentions are. I would imagine that outside of internet nerdery these numbers are mostly used for regional planning, transportation and the like, and are aimed at being useful for that.

MSAs and CSAs are calculated using commuting figures and the commuting data is weighed the exact same way for each and every region in the United States. The Office of Management and Budget isn't out to get X or Y and play favorites to Z. In other words -- just because something feels like something to you doesn't make it so. If the regions that you believe feel like a greater metro were truly one greater metro, the commuting patterns would reflect that and they would be merged into an MSAs or CSAs...but they're not and for a good reason. It's math, plain and simple.

If it bothers you then feel free to create your own arbitrary definition of a metro area that doesn't involve math or reality. We'll just use your gut feelings, personal bias, visual keys ("continuous development" vs too many trees and cows, etc) and a dash of bruised homerism. And maybe we can draw our cool new map with crayons!

[BG918]

Originally Posted by jtk1519

If I read that right and the old info on wiki is correct, the Dallas-Fort Worth CSA added the Corsicana and Sulphur Springs MicroSAs and finally lopped over into Oklahoma adding the Durant MicroSA. Must be the casinos. Look out Shreveport.

Durant is 95 miles from downtown Dallas! Though you do have the casinos and Lake Texoma which are popular with people in DFW. I was down there recently and was amazed there are new subdivisions and retail centers popping up in far north DFW towns like Pilot Point and Celina, which are the next Prosper and Anna, which were the next McKinney and Allen 5 years ago. These areas are just as close, if not closer, to Oklahoma than Dallas and much further from Ft Worth. Still 7 million people is pretty impressive.

[unusualfire]

Some notable square miles of some of these new CSA's


Portland CSA 12716 Sq mi
Columbus CSA 8465 Sq mi
Indianapolis CSA 7271 Sq mi
Cleveland CSA 5880 Sq mi
Cincinnati CSA 4892 Sq mi
Dayton CSA 3115 Sq mi

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

CSA definitions are indeed getting completely out of hand. i mean, chicago's CSA includes both kenosha, WI and remington, IN. these two towns are 160 miles driving distance from each other!!!!!!!!!! given chicago's typical traffic loads, it would take you about 3.5 hours to drive between the two places.

same city my ass. the CSA definition may measure something relevanet, but it's certainly nothing that i would consider a single given human settlement.

I totally agree that the definitions have become unwieldy, but, to be fair, all of Jasper County, Indiana could be axed and Chicago's CSA would only be down 33,000.

It appears that the Chicago CSAs constituent MSAs didn't pick up any additional counties, but the CSA absorbed the Ottawa–Peru (formerly Ottawa–Streator?) micropolitan statistical area. Ottawa–Peru covers a pretty big area (three counties!); however, most of the 154,000 people reside in LaSalle County, which, by some unofficial definitions, was already included in Chicagoland. This puts the Chicago CSA at nearly 9,900,000.

The Milwaukee CSA added three micropolitan areas and has now broken two million. By my calculations, it's at 2,033,139.

The Madison CSA also grew quite a bit. Its MSA added a small county of nearly 37,000 (Green County, Wisconsin), and the Janesville MSA (hometown of Eddie Munster Kermit the Frog famous conservative douche and former VP candidate Paul Ryan)—re-dubbed Janesville–Beloit—has now been assimilated into uber–liberal greater Madison. Awesome. That population is 835,740.

[Urbanguy]

unusualfire, thats mainly because the counties in Oregon are quite large in comparison those in Ohio & Indiana even though the majority of the people living in the CSA live in and around areas surrounding the I-5 corridor. However, I think that adding Salem back to Portland (as it was in the 2000 Census) is about right but adding Albany & Corvallis just seems like a bit of a stretch even though these are supposed to be based on commuter data.

[Chef]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

MSAs and CSAs are calculated using commuting figures and the commuting data is weighed the exact same way for each and every region in the United States. The Office of Management and Budget isn't out to get X or Y and play favorites to Z. In other words -- just because something feels like something to you doesn't make it so. If the regions that you believe feel like a greater metro were truly one greater metro, the commuting patterns would reflect that and they would be merged into an MSAs or CSAs...but they're not and for a good reason. It's math, plain and simple.

If it bothers you then feel free to create your own arbitrary definition of a metro area that doesn't involve math or reality. We'll just use your gut feelings, personal bias, visual keys ("continuous development" vs too many trees and cows, etc) and a dash of bruised homerism. And maybe we can draw our cool new map with crayons!

The point that I am making isn't that the numbers are arbitrary. It is that CSAs are not metros, and they shouldn't be confused for metros. MSAs are metros, that is why they are called Metropolitan Statistical Areas. People prefer the CSA to MSA numbers because they make their city look bigger.