Visualizing 20 American Cities with Economies as Big as Countries

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by MattBerryOfficial

I've always thought the USA was overly ambitious with how it defined it's metro areas.

the thing is though people *are* actually commuting all of that distance towards the center of american regions for work in my experience. whether thats reflected in traffic jams 40 miles west of st. louis (cheap real estate) or 40 miles north of san francisco (expensive real estate).

[nito]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the thing is though people *are* actually commuting all of that distance towards the center of american regions for work in my experience. whether thats reflected in traffic jams 40 miles west of st. louis (cheap real estate) or 40 miles north of san francisco (expensive real estate).

There are people that do make these long-distance commutes, just not in any sizable volume due to the limited high-capacity transit options and sprawled nature of most North American cities.

[Stay Stoked Brah]

You can live in a metropolitan area and not commute to the core. a lot of commuters go from suburb to suburb, or suburb to secondary, tertiary employment district. somebody in Pompano Beach Florida most likely is not commuting to downtown Miami, they could commute to Ft. Lauderdale or closer.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

These aren't cities, these are conurbations. Some are physically larger than countries. More hyphens than you will find in a Quebec phonebook.

You all always love to talk about Toronto as a great city. So add it to every other city in Canada and you still don't have something equivalent to New York.

As for the other complaints about MSAs, the political divisions everywhere vary all over the map with little economic effect. LA is the best example having many, many tiny municiplaities in one great urban area. But the SF Bay Area is also a unified economic region. People live in San Francisco and commute to San Jose every day (or did before COVID had them working from home)--the "Google busses" hauling them are infamous in San Francisco neighborhoods. The whole region is connected by commuter rail (BART) and people move around it for shopping, work and liesure activities constantly. The San Francisco football team plays in the San Jose MSA. It's all one metro area in reality and it's really an economic engine that is more productive than so many countries.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

That's MSA.

Here, is CSA:

With as much growth as they've seen I'm surprised to not see Austin-Round Rock on that list.

[N90]

Originally Posted by BG918

With as much growth as they've seen I'm surprised to not see Austin-Round Rock on that list.

That's a list of CSAs. Austin isn't on that list because Austin doesn't have a CSA. A few cities like Austin, San Diego, and Tampa don't have CSAs while the rest do.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

You all always love to talk about Toronto as a great city. So add it to every other city in Canada and you still don't have something equivalent to New York.

As for the other complaints about MSAs, the political divisions everywhere vary all over the map with little economic effect. LA is the best example having many, many tiny municiplaities in one great urban area. But the SF Bay Area is also a unified economic region. People live in San Francisco and commute to San Jose every day (or did before COVID had them working from home)--the "Google busses" hauling them are infamous in San Francisco neighborhoods. The whole region is connected by commuter rail (BART) and people move around it for shopping, work and liesure activities constantly. The San Francisco football team plays in the San Jose MSA. It's all one metro area in reality and it's really an economic engine that is more productive than so many countries.

I've said that on another thread, but in general, CSAs are much less problematic than MSAs.

We have things like San Jose and San Francisco, San Bernardino and Los Angeles, Brigdeport and New York, coming separated while they form a single metro regions for at least 6 decades.

CSA, on the other hand, just have one or two rural counties added onto Atlanta or Dallas or Chicago that makes no difference whatsoever.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by N90

That's a list of CSAs. Austin isn't on that list because Austin doesn't have a CSA. A few cities like Austin, San Diego, and Tampa don't have CSAs while the rest do.

Gotcha. Looks like the Austin-Round Rock MSA is at ~$147B so right around Columbus and Kansas City.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I've said that on another thread, but in general, CSAs are much less problematic than MSAs.

We have things like San Jose and San Francisco, San Bernardino and Los Angeles, Brigdeport and New York, coming separated while they form a single metro regions for at least 6 decades.

CSA, on the other hand, just have one or two rural counties added onto Atlanta or Dallas or Chicago that makes no difference whatsoever.

Agreed. Can anyone with actual knowledge of the area say with a straight face that Worcester is in a different metro economy from Boston while Dover, NH somehow is in the same metro economy as Boston? Because that's what happens when you just look at MSAs in Boston's case. If you follow the MSA definition, metro Boston stops 16 miles south of Boston's southernmost city limits, once you cross into Easton, Mass. Welcome to Providence.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by nito

There are people that do make these long-distance commutes, just not in any sizable volume due to the limited high-capacity transit options and sprawled nature of most North American cities.

i just said towards the center, and its relative as to what is considered “sizable volume,” but i’ve seen the daily traffic jams in wine country on the southbound 101, the traffic snarls with thousands of cars two counties over from chicago, even sat for hours near the desert outside of the LA basin in inbound commuter traffic.

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

T More hyphens than you will find in a Quebec phonebook.

[nito]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i just said towards the center, and its relative as to what is considered “sizable volume,” but i’ve seen the daily traffic jams in wine country on the southbound 101, the traffic snarls with thousands of cars two counties over from chicago, even sat for hours near the desert outside of the LA basin in inbound commuter traffic.

Traffic jams aren’t really a quantifiable measure of city-metro area connectivity. They could be the result of accidents, roadworks, insufficient capacity, poor design, substandard driving proficiency, etc… The private car is a low-density mode of transport, and of course you need the corresponding parking capacity at the city destination.

On a follow-on to MattBerryOfficial’s original point, the definition of US metro areas is simply too loose due to the low threshold for how urban areas are defined and the prevalence of sprawl. There also isn’t much in the way of high capacity transit outside of a few cities to facilitate substantial socio-economic interaction. It’s why most European cities tend to outperform their North American peers in socio-economic interactive events despite having smaller urban/metro area populations.