Quote:
Originally Posted by IcedCowboyCoffee
MSA definitions are useful for raw population counts in a region because even those individuals who live isolated and in the middle of nothingness are still linked to the region they are pooled into in a way that they are explicitly not with more distant regions.
Urban Area population measures on the other hand are most useful when you want to look at population densities. It carves away all of that empty land to get at the heart of just how closely 95% of people in a region are to one another without the arbitrariness of how much or how little unused land there is within county lines.
They both have their usefulness depending on what exactly you want to compare. But Urban Areas only get redefined and counted every 10 years so we can't use them for these yearly estimate debates like we do with MSAs  so where's the fun in that |
And urban area is not a frozen area. They change every census. Metropolitan areas, which are based on fixed borders administrative subdivisions, are very important to measure population evolution.
Threaded Mode