Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
These MSAs should be combined:
NYC + Fairfield County
San Francisco + San Jose
Detroit + Ann Arbor (maybe also add in Monroe County)
Cleveland + Akron
Raleigh + Durham
Los Angeles + Riverside
I could make a case either way for Baltimore + Washington. These are clearly two very intertwined metros, but they also have two very distinct center of gravities.
Toledo should probably be added to the Detroit CSA. This would likely occur when/if Monroe County is ever added to the Detroit MSA.
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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.