Quote:
Originally Posted by edale
There are old factory towns like Hamilton and Middletown, but for the most part, it's just massive amounts of sprawl where you don't really feel like you're part of Cincy or Dayton.
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I agree with this. The Miami Valley is culturally very distinct from Cincinnati. People forget that Dayton's "influence" extends all the way up to at least Sidney, which no one would claim to be a part of the Cincinnati region. I'd argue that Dayton is probably a bigger magnet for west central/northwest Ohio than Cincinnati is too, second only to Columbus in terms of pulling people out of the Limas and St. Marys up there.
I think it gets murky because of the way the MSAs are defined. No one in their right mind would call Springboro a suburb of Cincinnati, but it gets counted as such due to it being in Warren County in the Cincinnati MSA. Even more weirdly, Greene County (home of the air force base and Dayton's second largest suburb, Beavercreek) is in Cincinnati's ODOT roads district but Montgomery County is in its own roads district.