[Yuri]

Let's have a disclaimer here as we're losing the main point of the thread.

When I think of Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo "metro areas" (metro areas, not MSAs or CSAs), I usually use CSAs for Detroit and Cleveland (more precisely, Detroit CSA minus Lenawee; Cleveland MSA + Akron MSA). For Pittsburgh and Buffalo, it's their MSAs. Buffalo is very straightforward as its definitions remain the same since 1950.

Anyway, as I intended to compare US metro areas with the much more strict in Europe, I thought well, let's work with MSAs then, which are already overesized for overseas standards. And as people always complain about Pittsburgh particularities (big counties, big coal towns independent from Pittsburgh), I thought about using 1950 4-county definition, but that would leave Butler out, which is basically Cleveland's Medina/Geauga or Detroit's Livingston. It's the metro area boom county. That's it.

What difference does it make to this thread? Pittsburgh peaked in 1970 instead of 1960? Or its total decline was a bit smaller as result?