[goat314]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Right, I get it. To me "metro" means metropolitan... which signifies city, surrounding suburbs, and neighboring communities which are developed/contiguous/closely connected to/largely function with the city core.

Basically, urban area, like you mention... and not some distant, disconnected, largely unrelated, and entirely rural area 50+ miles from the core. You're just not going to find many non-white people in these places in the northern United States. There are simply VERY, VERY few black rural areas in the northern US.

Relative lack of Latinos in Pittsburgh, Cincy certainly plays a role, but it's more due to their outsized MSAs for their core populations. There is absolutely no reason for Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to have the same roughly 5,000 sq mi MSAs as Philadelphia does. Nor St. Louis to have a nearly 8,500 sq mi MSA... it's just stupid.

I agree, it makes St. Louis msa density appear much less than it really is when you double the size of the MSA to add 100,000 people.