What's The Amount and Division of Your Province, State, or Territory's Metros.

[Razor]

Forgive me if I'm a little off on this..It's kind of hard to count a list off of a computer screen.I threw a dart at one province

Guăngdōng Province -China

High Sufficiency= 40
Small=7
Medium=10
Large= 9
Huge = 3

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Wow, I had no idea that the metro east is now that large. That's nearly 25% of the entire STL metro area. It's still in the 400 - 500k range in my mind.

That's also after it contracted some between the 2010 and 2020 Censuses. That being said, even if you narrow the Metro East down to the three counties that actually border the city and St. Louis County for closest proximity, you still have have 558k people between Madison, St. Clair, and Monroe Counties, with the bulk living in Madison and St. Clair Counties.

Originally Posted by galleyfox

To be fair, the main urbanized part is smaller.

The MSA figures include a lot of rural counties on the edge of Metro East commuting to the outermost sprawl.

Madison - 262,966
St. Clair - 259,686

Bond - 16,426
Calhoun - 4,739
Clinton - 37,562
Jersey - 21,773
Macoupin - 44,926
Monroe - 34,637

Monroe County for all intents and purposes should be bigger than it is. It's literally across the JB Bridge from south St. Louis County. We're talking a 20 minute drive from downtown St. Louis to Columbia, IL and its surrounding cornfields.

Originally Posted by SFBruin

I think that I read somewhere that the second largest "metro area" in Illinois is actually just the eastern suburbs of St. Louis.

This is correct.

[Razor]

Well that's a unique scenerio..Illinois second city is actually an Eastern Suburb of another state's primary city.

I guess you can say the same thing about New Jersey,

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yes, per galleyfox's post, the IL portion of st. louis' MSA (aka "the metro east"), is the second largest general concentration of people in IL outside of chicagoland.

however, given the near total collapse of east st. louis over the past 70 years, it doesn't really have much of a center of its own anymore (other than st. louis itself over in MO). in fact, there are 5 towns in the metro east with a population over 25,000 people, but they're all relatively small potatoes and very widely dispersed among the IL cornfields, with none of them rising to the occasion of being a true clear alpha over all the others.

Belleville: 42,404
O'Fallon: 32,289
Granite City: 27,549
Edwardsville: 26,808
Alton: 25,676


at its peak in 1950, east st. louis had 82,366 people and was THE unquestioned main city of the metro east, but as of 2020, it is now home to only 18,469 people (-78%), and still falling. had it remained intact as the alpha core city of the metro east, the whole region would probably feel like a much more substantial place today, with an actual centrally-located core city opposite st. louis on the eastern banks of the mississippi river, instead of the almost entirely bombed-out shell of a once-was city that lies there now.

Driving through ESTL to get to Belleville is an utterly depressing experience. The aerial doesn't the do the desolate feeling on the ground justice since you can't really tell from it that the lone highrise, theatre, hospital, and the old hotel are all abandoned buildings from the aerial. The hotel is supposedly getting redeveloped, but it's only a matter of time before the rest get torn down. Also, the projects next to the post office in the aerial have all been torn down, minus one lone building. It's just a large empty field now.

Had ESTL not declined, we also would have likely seen less eastward sprawl which the region suffers from today.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

Monroe County for all intents and purposes should be bigger than it is. It's literally across the JB Bridge from south St. Louis County. We're talking a 20 minute drive from downtown St. Louis to Columbia, IL and its surrounding cornfields.
.

Well you can definitely see new subdivisions, so I guess it growing a little bit. St. Louis exurban development looks very patchy all around though, I guess probably because of floodplains and bluffs and such?

[Razor]

The Anti-China

The province of Manitoba

Small=1 (a few decades from becoming a medium maybe)

Saskatchewan

High Sufficiency=2

State of Alaska

High Sufficiency = 1 (Almost 2)

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Razor

Well that's a unique scenerio..Illinois second city is actually an Eastern Suburb of another state's primary city.

I would say that the metro east is Illinois' 2nd largest population center, but for actual cities that are actually located in Illinois, the 2nd city outside of Chicagoland is either Rockford or Peoria, split the hairs between them as you will, they're like 2A and 2B.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Well you can definitely see new subdivisions, so I guess it growing a little bit. St. Louis exurban development looks very patchy all around though, I guess probably because of floodplains and bluffs and such?

It did grow by about 2,000 people between 2010 and 2020, but we’re still talking about a county of 35,000 total.

In terms of development, the entire metro area is riddled with floodplains, but the Missouri side with the far greater population is the side of the river that decided to start building on them over the last three to four decades en masse. That came back to bite them in 2019 when the region suffered large scale flooding.

The Illinois side has plenty of floodplains of its own, but there’s far less incentive to build. People aren’t exactly trying to live in or around East St. Louis, the industrial park that is Sauget and, or Centreville (now consolidated into Cahokia Heights) that’s made the national news multiple times for its sewers backing up into people’s homes anytime the region gets rain. Most of the Illinois development since ESTL’s downfall has been further east, on top of the hills and bluffs further from the Mississippi. Or at least that’s the story of St. Clair County. Madison County hasn’t been much different, but there’s nothing like the demise of East St. Louis over there. Granite City and Alton certainly saw their populations fall, but nowhere near the same extent as ESTL. Both cities still have their desirable areas.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I would say that the metro east is Illinois' 2nd largest population center, but for actual cities that are actually located in Illinois, the 2nd city outside of Chicagoland is either Rockford or Peoria, split the hairs between them as you will, they're like 2A and 2B.

Ahh Rockford..Home of a band that was part of the soundtrack of my pre-teen youth. Cheap Trick. I think Illinois is indicative of most States or provinces. All roads basically lead to 1 city. In Illinois's case, that 1 city happens to be a large global city.