Transition areas between metros

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yeah, ytown is solidly right in-between cleveland and pittsburgh.

it's generally thought of as ne ohio rather than metro cleveland or pittsburgh.

of connectivity note, ohio's only commuter rail service ran from cleveland to youngstown until it was discontinued in 1977.

does the fact that youngstown is located 7 miles west of the OH/PA border make it seem like it's more oriented to cleveland despite being ever so slightly closer to pittsburgh?

i mean, the rural land just outside of youngstown looks a lot more stereotypically "midwest" than it does "appalachian".

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0806...7i16384!8i8192

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

does the fact that youngstown is located 7 miles west of the OH/PA border make it seem like it's more oriented to cleveland despite being ever so slightly closer to pittsburgh?

i mean, the rural land just outside of youngstown looks a lot more stereotypically "midwest" than it does "appalachian".

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0806...7i16384!8i8192

The I-80 corridor doesn't get as hilly in western PA as the I-76 corridor. The 76 corridor is probably what people think of as "Appalachian" looking. Every so often I'll drive 76 instead of 80 coming from MI to NY because it's a much more interesting drive. The downside is that it adds an hour to the drive if you're going to NYC.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The I-80 corridor doesn't get as hilly in western PA as the I-76 corridor. The 76 corridor is probably what people think of as "Appalachian" looking. Every so often I'll drive 76 instead of 80 coming from MI to NY because it's a much more interesting drive. The downside is that it adds an hour to the drive if you're going to NYC.

yep, same here to cleveland sometimes for the same reasons.

however, the worst experience i ever had driving in my life was a whiteout in the penn mountains on I-80.
i literally could not see a thing and pulled off first exit in the middle of nowhere in tears and white knuckles until it blew over.
i thought we were going to freakin die.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

does the fact that youngstown is located 7 miles west of the OH/PA border make it seem like it's more oriented to cleveland despite being ever so slightly closer to pittsburgh?

i mean, the rural land just outside of youngstown looks a lot more stereotypically "midwest" than it does "appalachian".

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0806...7i16384!8i8192

yes, that's why youngstown is usually thought of as 'ne ohio.' also just because it is in ohio i suppose (otoh, erie, pa is very ne ohio-ish too).

youngstown really right in the middle of both larger cle and pitts metros though.

there are also 'greater youngstown' with the suburbs and 'mahoning valley' monikers, both of which you see mentioned often, so even though youngstown city is greatly diminished in population its really still its own thing.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yep, same here to cleveland sometimes for the same reasons.

however, the worst experience i ever had driving in my life was a whiteout in the penn mountains on I-80.
i literally could not see a thing and pulled off first exit in the middle of nowhere in tears and white knuckles until it blew over.
i thought we were going to freakin die.

I've gotten caught in a snowstorm on I-80 before as well. There were jack-knifed trucks littered along I-80 for about 200 miles. It was a miracle that we made it without getting stuck, but took about 9 hours to get from the Ohio line to the Jersey line.

[westak]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

akron is not part of of 'greater cleveland' aka cleveland's msa -- driving downtown to downtown they are 40min apart from each other.

however, cleveland-akron-canton is a csa.

cleveland and akron are directly separated by the cuyahoga valley national park, but there is some connected suburban sprawl on either side. it's thinner on the western side as there is another state park there -- hinckley reservation.

also, there is also a bit of rural separation to the east of this suburban cleveland-akron-canton csa and youngstown (ie., between ravenna and lordstown). it's not like cle or pitts have quite grown into greater youngstown, but they will probably eventually all be connected someday.

I feel like the Turnpike is sort of the line of demarcation in Summit and Portage County(technically Akron MSA) anything north of I-80 in these counties feels like Cleveland while communties south of the turnpike feel more like Akron...these lines have gotten blurrier though.

I completely agree that Youngstown is it's own thing. My family that lives there certainly will go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh for some cultural things(concerts, Cavs games, NFL/MLB games) but they do not identify as being from either area.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Ann Arbor/Detroit buffer is everything west of 275 and east of US 23. The airport area is kind of weird too. Its super suburban north of 94 but everything south of the airport is basically out in the country.

Along M-14 I would put it at the Wayne/Washtenaw County line. Detroit exurban sprawl goes west of I-275 right up to the county line. It turns semi-rural on the Washtenaw side thanks to the Ann Arbor greenbelt. You can clearly see the county line here: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3552....537944,13.41z

[iheartthed]

The Susquehanna River always feels to me like the transition area between Baltimore and Wilmington/Philadelphia from I-95.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by westak

I feel like the Turnpike is sort of the line of demarcation in Summit and Portage County(technically Akron MSA) anything north of I-80 in these counties feels like Cleveland while communties south of the turnpike feel more like Akron...these lines have gotten blurrier though.

I completely agree that Youngstown is it's own thing. My family that lives there certainly will go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh for some cultural things(concerts, Cavs games, NFL/MLB games) but they do not identify as being from either area.

yep when built the turnpike became another traditional demarcation, although as you say not really anymore these days for cle and akron.

there was also a saying along the lines of 'there is nothing worthwhile below the turnpike,' but i think booming columbus stealing such a big swath of ne ohio residents over the years now has put that old joke to bed.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The Susquehanna River always feels to me like the transition area between Baltimore and Wilmington/Philadelphia from I-95.

we went down to dc on amtrak over this past weekend and i was of course looking out the windows and wondering about those dc-balt-wilm-philly metro demarcation lines.

[Steely Dan]

i found a resource that has the new 2020 UA shapes on it.

https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerweb2020/



anyway, the first place i checked out was the chicagoland/metro milwaukee transition zone of SE wisconsin.

the image below displays why i really prefer the UA defintion over the MSA/CSA county mash-up game.

kenosha and racine still stand as their own smaller lakefront cities, neither one fully amalgamated into either of the beasts to their north and south.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The Susquehanna River always feels to me like the transition area between Baltimore and Wilmington/Philadelphia from I-95.

Valid. Great observation.

It's also whereabouts (when you're driving) you lose WHYY (Philadelphia's NPR station) and have to switch to WYPR (Baltimore's). Interestingly, when going north on the NJ Turnpike, I can keep WHYY until about Exit 10 (Outerbridge Crossing) which is way further north than one would expect. The latter is a blessing because WNYC is surprisingly terrible.

[TWAK]

California has urban growth boundaries, greenbelts, and natural barriers that kinda make the transition abrupt/gapped.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by TWAK

California has urban growth boundaries, greenbelts, and natural barriers that kinda make the transition abrupt/gapped.

Right. I live at the very eastern edge of fremont and when I mean edge, the city has a hard stop and it turns into cows, horses and mountains.

[BigDipper 80]

You definitely see a lot more "hard edges" out west than you do in the midwest and east. In the older metros, the sprawl just gets thinner and thinner before eventually petering out but in California, Arizona and a few other states, it's all pretty much the same density as you move out from the center until it just sort of stops. At least until another developer comes in and builds at the same density again.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

You definitely see a lot more "hard edges" out west than you do in the midwest and east. In the older metros, the sprawl just gets thinner and thinner before eventually petering out but in California, Arizona and a few other states, it's all pretty much the same density as you move out from the center until it just sort of stops.

Yeah, cities out west tend to have WAY less ultra-low density "country sprawl" out in their hinterlands. metro areas out there often end more abruptly, with harder edges where development just stops. One of the more extreme examples being vegas where there are places with 7,500 ppsm tightly packed suburban subdivisions directly abutting wide open desert wilderness.

with a few exceptions like miami, cities in the east have a way more gradual urban bleed on their peripheries, which does drag density figures down, even weighted ones.

take a look at tract density maps of detroit and vegas. do you see all of those shades of green around metro detroit?

that's all "country sprawl", vegas has very little of it by comparison. it just goes straight into mostly uninhabited yellow.

[sopas ej]

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I thought Nevada was the state that has the most land owned by the federal government, like 85% or something? Maybe that's why Las Vegas is is surrounded by no development, apart from it being in the middle of a desert of course.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by JManc

Right. I live at the very eastern edge of fremont and when I mean edge, the city has a hard stop and it turns into cows, horses and mountains.

Lots of mountain lions and bobcats in those parts as well.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I thought Nevada was the state that has the most land owned by the federal government, like 85% or something? Maybe that's why Las Vegas is is surrounded by no development, apart from it being in the middle of a desert of course.

Additionally, Detroit never sprawled into uninhabited hinterlands like Vegas, but instead into surrounding farming communities. So there was never really a time when the density surrounding Detroit's urban area ever went to zero like it does out west.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

You definitely see a lot more "hard edges" out west than you do in the midwest and east. In the older metros, the sprawl just gets thinner and thinner before eventually petering out but in California, Arizona and a few other states, it's all pretty much the same density as you move out from the center until it just sort of stops. At least until another developer comes in and builds at the same density again.

Yeah. You never get a sense for how huge Atlanta is until you fly out of the place at night. It just keeps...going. Tons of developments hidden in the trees.

Obviously, the approach to LAX from the east covers 40+ miles of sprawl, but there aren't trees hiding it at ground level like is typically the case anywhere east of Oklahoma.