Quote:
Originally Posted by edale
Agree with everything here except the Toledo/Monroe County point. Monroe County is very rural near the Wayne County border. Really, most of the county is rural, except for the city of Monroe itself, and the small amount of Toledo sprawl at the southern edge of the county. If anything, Monroe County should be with the Toledo MSA.
And I don't believe Toledo should be added to the Detroit CSA, either. There's a somewhat crazy dividing line between the Ohio and Michigan in metro Toledo. You have pretty extensive, mature suburban development on the Ohio side directly adjacent to farmland across the Michigan border. You can clearly see the pattern here. There is a little bit of sprawl on the Michigan side further east, but it's very limited to a small area between SR 223 and SR 24. I've never really seen a state line act as such a cutoff for development before. Most cities on or near state lines flow pretty seamlessly, but Toledo is almost entirely contained on the Ohio side, despite Downtown Toledo being only ~7 miles from the state line. There's a pretty clear dividing line between Detroit and Toledo, and the space between is virtually empty, so it makes sense for them to remain separated. Certainly less connection exists between those two cities than Cincinnati and Dayton, which are closer together and almost entirely linked by sprawl, but still remain separate CSAs. |
The part of Monroe closest to Wayne County is where the nuclear power plant is located, so that's why it isn't developed. Monroe wouldn't add a meaningful number of population to the Detroit MSA, but it should absolutely be part of Detroit instead of being its own MSA. The entire county's population is about the same as some of Detroit's larger suburbs.
I think Toledo makes as much sense being part of Detroit's CSA as Flint. Maybe even a bit more. A few years ago Toledo was trying to create a commuter rail line to Detroit via DTW.