Transition areas between metros

[McBane]

I've always been fascinated by the hard edges separating country from city. Don't see that at all up in the northeast.

I think the first time I noticed this was on a trip to Israel a long time ago. Here's a great "hard edge" example in the southern city of Be'er Sheva.

[digitallagasse]

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.

For Vegas is is a combo of government owned land and water. Land sales do happen and is why development has been able to expand where it is. For water all developments have two options. Either they use ground water or tap into the infrastructure getting water from and then back to the Colorado river. Ground water is very limited and hence why not much happens outside the Las Vegas valley. For the piped water things have slowly expanded but are now reaching the base of the mountain ranges that mostly circle the valley.

Even if large tracts of land outside the Las Vegas valley were available for development not much would happen due to lack of water. Coyote Springs is a perfect example of this. They have the land but don't have the water and hence not much has happened. A rural community without much water has little options to even exist let alone persist.

Note for Colorado river water that the waste water is sent back to treatment plants and then back to Lake Mead. For water used in homes and businesses 90% of the waste water recovered and sent back to the lake. So at least that water use is mostly solved. In simple terms if the waste water flows into the server system then 90% gets recovered. It if doesn't then it is mostly lost to evaporation. Las Vegas uses more river water than it has allocated and has for decades. The trick is that it gets a credit for all the water it sends back.

[digitallagasse]

Gated sub-division on the edge of nothing in Las Vegas.

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.3261...7i13312!8i6656

[edale]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

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.

I guess I haven't flown in the right direction out of Atlanta. Last time I flew out of there I remember thinking how quickly everything turned rural. Looking at Google Maps, development does end pretty quickly to the west of the airport, so that must've been the direction we took off. Atlanta's sprawl to the north and south is indeed vast, though.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by edale

I guess I haven't flown in the right direction out of Atlanta. Last time I flew out of there I remember thinking how quickly everything turned rural. Looking at Google Maps, development does end pretty quickly to the west of the airport, so that must've been the direction we took off. Atlanta's sprawl to the north and south is indeed vast, though.

Flightradar24 has a live map that shows this nicely. The westbound route takes less than ten minutes to get past Newnan to rural woods. But heading to the Northeast, the flight path will curve back over Atlanta itself, Gwinnett County sprawl, and perhaps Gainesville sprawl -- 50 miles from the airport.

[sopas ej]

It's interesting to me, this transition/perceived transition between metros.

Being that I'm from the Los Angeles area, I tend to measure things in drive time---and of course in miles, too. Being that I know the scale/distances of Greater LA, I thought I'd do some population 2020 Census density maps to scale in comparison to LA.

Greater LA.


San Francisco Bay Area.


Here's Milwaukee-Chicago.


NYC to Philadelphia.


And then Philly to DC.


Here's Miami. I realize Naples, FL is only about a 2-hour drive from Miami. It's funny to me that in this part of the state, it only takes 2 hours to drive from one side of it to the other.


Here's Atlanta. I've never been there, but I guess it's very low-density sprawl?


Here's Austin and Houston. I didn't realize how close they are to each other. People talk about Houston sprawling, but I guess it sprawls differently from LA. At least the way it's portrayed here, it looks compact compared to LA. Like Atlanta, I guess it's more low-density sprawl.


Here's Portland, OR and Salem.


Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Sparse.


Phoenix and Tucson.


Denver and Colorado Springs.


Thought I'd throw in Las Vegas, NV. It looks really small.


Cleveland.


St. Louis, MO. Is it very rural outside of St. Louis?

[mousquet]

^ Idk how you manage to do that, but it's a good sample of data easy to read.

You may add Seattle, Detroit, some more Ohio, Dallas-Fort Worth, New Orleans and some other significant or well known areas of your country.
But yeah, it is very large and doing this might take some time.

Also, geographers and demographers always say that maps must be annotated with a legend.
They are strict and want everything to be explicit.

But that's a pretty good job that I don't know how to do anyway.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

It's interesting to me, this transition/perceived transition between metros.


Cleveland.

This is Cleveland and about 1/4th of Detroit.

[PhilliesPhan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

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

100% agree. This is the reason I've long considered Cecil County, MD to be in the Philadelphia MSA/CSA, even if it isn't as culturally aligned with us as, say, New Castle County, DE. Philly's southern transition area is much more apparent than its northern transition area in Mercer County, NJ (one could even make the argument that parts of Hunterdon County and Ocean County--especially Jackson Township--are in this northern transition area).

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.

I've been flying out to Phoenix a lot more often, as my fiancée is from the Valley. Landing in Phoenix is very interesting, as it comes into view very suddenly. You can be staring at an endless expanse of mountains one minute and the endless sprawl of the Valley the next--an especially striking contrast at night. I've had similar experiences flying into Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Reno.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

It's interesting to me, this transition/perceived transition between metros.

Being that I'm from the Los Angeles area, I tend to measure things in drive time---and of course in miles, too. Being that I know the scale/distances of Greater LA, I thought I'd do some population 2020 Census density maps to scale in comparison to LA.

Here's Miami. I realize Naples, FL is only about a 2-hour drive from Miami. It's funny to me that in this part of the state, it only takes 2 hours to drive from one side of it to the other.
[img][/img]

With traffic, it is usually quicker to get to Naples than West Palm Beach from Miami on a normal day.

[edale]

The large expanses around St. Louis surprise me. I assumed that rural Missouri would be similar to rural Ohio, which is basically all semi-populated as the Cleveland example shows. I know the Illinois side of the STL metro is a very strange, seemingly random low-density development pattern, which is shown pretty clearly on the map. But I didn't realize how truly rural and empty the area around STL is.

[westak]

Originally Posted by edale

The large expanses around St. Louis surprise me. I assumed that rural Missouri would be similar to rural Ohio, which is basically all semi-populated as the Cleveland example shows. I know the Illinois side of the STL metro is a very strange, seemingly random low-density development pattern, which is shown pretty clearly on the map. But I didn't realize how truly rural and empty the area around STL is.

The St. Louis CSA is about the same physical size as NEO which has 5 separate metropolitan areas within it and 3 Micropolitan areas with over 100k each, hence the difference once you get outside of St. Louis and Cleveland.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Heading west to east, it was pretty well developed from just east of Rolla to the western fringe of St. Louis (low density exurban sprawl), but once you cross into Illinois on 70, its not long before you're driving through farmland.

[edale]

Originally Posted by westak

The St. Louis CSA is about the same physical size as NEO which has 5 separate metropolitan areas within it and 3 Micropolitan areas with over 100k each, hence the difference once you get outside of St. Louis and Cleveland.

I wasn't comparing St. Louis to Cleveland, but more making an observation about the emptiness of Missouri compared to Midwestern states further east. Looking at a more zoomed out version of the population density maps, Ohio and the southern half of Michigan are basically all shades of green and blue, while Missouri is dominated by yellow. I had thought that Missouri had somewhat similar development patterns as Ohio, with small towns and cities all over the place, but that's not really the case. I think it furthers the case for differentiating between the east and west midwestern states. Great Lakes states vs Great Plains. Missouri seems more aligned with the Great Plains.

https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/...ed2b2fd7ff6eb7

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

I wasn't comparing St. Louis to Cleveland, but more making an observation about the emptiness of Missouri compared to Midwestern states further east. Looking at a more zoomed out version of the population density maps, Ohio and the southern half of Michigan are basically all shades of green and blue, while Missouri is dominated by yellow. I had thought that Missouri had somewhat similar development patterns as Ohio, with small towns and cities all over the place, but that's not really the case. I think it furthers the case for differentiating between the east and west midwestern states. Great Lakes states vs Great Plains. Missouri seems more aligned with the Great Plains.

https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/...ed2b2fd7ff6eb7

Lower Michigan and Ohio have gotta be among the most broadly developed regions in the U.S. Especially Ohio, which feels like it has almost no forested areas remaining in the state.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Especially Ohio, which feels like it has almost no forested areas remaining in the state.

what?

there are vast tracts of heavily forested land in SE ohio.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5234...!7i8192!8i4096

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

what?

there are vast tracts of heavily forested land in SE ohio.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5234...!7i8192!8i4096

So one region of the state. It's still a very deforested place, especially compared to its neighbors to the east, southeast and north.

[westak]

Originally Posted by edale

I wasn't comparing St. Louis to Cleveland, but more making an observation about the emptiness of Missouri compared to Midwestern states further east. Looking at a more zoomed out version of the population density maps, Ohio and the southern half of Michigan are basically all shades of green and blue, while Missouri is dominated by yellow. I had thought that Missouri had somewhat similar development patterns as Ohio, with small towns and cities all over the place, but that's not really the case. I think it furthers the case for differentiating between the east and west midwestern states. Great Lakes states vs Great Plains. Missouri seems more aligned with the Great Plains.

https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/...ed2b2fd7ff6eb7

You made a direct comparison concerning the areas "surrounding" St. Louis and Cleveland and being surprised at the large expanse surrounding St. Louis in comparison to Cleveland. You made no mention of other Midwestern States.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by edale

The large expanses around St. Louis surprise me.

Memphis is similar - almost nothing on the opposite side of the river.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

So one region of the state. It's still a very deforested place, especially compared to its neighbors to the east, southeast and north.

True, but it also quickly reverts to forest land when fields are abandoned, unlike out west.

The former Jefferson Proving Ground (about 30 miles west of the Ohio line) was typical farmland until 1942. In the subsequent 80 years, it has quickly returned to forest:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9282.../data=!3m1!1e3

They're actually managing the forest there now, so they keep doing burns of to create meadows to create a variety of plant and wildlife habitats.