Talk:List of United States metropolitan areas

Where did these stats come from, they do not seam right?

The MSAs are derived from the list here, kindly provided by the US Census. This is based on OMB's new list, put out in late 2003. It is not the same as the list that is still being used as the basis for most articles on MSAs on Wikipedia. The population figures were derived by me adding up the populations of each of the constituent parts of each MSA defined by OMB/the Census. Also, "seem" is spelled with two "e"'s. john k 05:11, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hello, check these sites out [1] and [2] they seem more correct.

The left map at your first site is, in fact, the basis for what I did. I did not used Combined Statistical Areas because those are not, in fact, metropolitan statistical areas. This list does exactly what it says it does - listing metropolitan statistical areas. I have no idea what demographia.com is, but it seems to be using the old definitions, which were made obsolete by the release of the 2003 ones. john k 06:01, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Actually, john, the Demographia study does in fact use the correct and updated info (it says so right under the header what it's based on, and I double-checked it.) CMSA's are not only MSA's, they are more accurate, and used by most media buyers and statisticians because they reflect better people's association, travel and hubs for cultural and geographical relationships. I don't know where you live but a good example is Boulder being included in the Denver MSA. It makes more geographical sense this way as Boulder is, for all practical purposes, a suburb of Denver and always has been less than 20 minutes away from the city limits of Denver which is quite small due to an annexation law. Now, St. Cloud being included in the Mpls/St. Paul CMSA is foolish, and the gov't needs to be more consistent there. You would need to add in Colorado Springs to Denver's MSA if you add in St. Cloud to Mpls. But it's all numbers.

The one statistic that is maddening is, for example, people taking a land mass and determining the size of a city. San Jose bragged about how it's larger than San Francisco. Well, when you limit the data by city limits only, then yes. San Jose is sprawl to the max. But it's not reality. Nor is Oklahoma City the 29th largest city in the country, as mis-reported in the Wall St. Journal today. By land mass? Fine. But it's a misnomer.

In terms of CMSAs, the fact is that they are not used any more. We now have MSAs, McSAs, and CSAs. The demographia study, if it is not using the old CMSAs, must be using the CSAs. Which are not defined as metropolitan areas by OMB, and which are combinations of Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Micropolitan Statistical Areas. At any rate, this article is correct as it stands, because it says it is referring to metropolitan statistical areas, not vaguely defined "Metropolitan areas." I think what we need to do is have articles on each Combined Statistical Area, Metropolitan Statistical Area, and Micropolitan Statistical Area in the coutnry, and possibly also on Urbanized Areas and Urban Clusters. We should have lists of all of them, as well - that is, essentially, we ought to reproduce what the census bureau has, with all its various categories, and without trying to assert anything beyond that these are census categories. That Spotsylvania County, Virginia is, by all definitions, within the "Washington-Arlington-Alexandria Metropolitan Statistical Area" is essentially absurd if it is meant to be a statement of anything besides the fact that this is how OMB defines it. Clearly, the Washington MSA has been artificially extended so as to save the government money on COLAs to federal employees. So it's POV to discuss metropolitan areas as anything but government statistical definitions used for various purposes. But we should have articles on all of them, and lists of all of them, to avoid this kind of dispute. john k 15:24, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

ERROR! ERROR! Roanoke, VA is missing and should be in between Huntington, WV and Green Bay. Please correct. -Amit

Merge Notice

This article is basically the same as United States metropolitan area. They should be merged. I suggest we make the top twenty five with the nicknames and special notes and put the rest of the list after that. I also think we should keep PR cities in their ranking position but use an asterisk or something, so that our ranking numbers match the Census numbers. DirectorStratton 23:27, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe this article should be merged, but the article on "Metropolitan areas by population" should be modified to incorporate CSAs rather than MSAs where applicable, with links to tables concerning both styles. After all, many MSAs were merged into CSAs in late 2004. The two articles should be linked with a clear explanation explaining the differences in each -- as such, the other article should not rely solely on MSA numbers as it does now. An example would be the SF Bay Area, which in 2004 was organized into a single CSA. However, San Diego is still organized in a single MSA; in the other article, I believe both should be listed with the CSA for places that have them (NYC, LA, SF, DC) and then the MSA where a CSA is not applicable (San Diego etc.). Catsonmars 07:23, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree Catsonmars, the United States metropolitan area article needs heavy modification it essentially copied the list of "MSA" while under the name of "Metropolitan Area" which is very misleading. "MSA" is not the same as "Metropolitan Area". A ranking which include MSAs, CSAs, micropolitan area (each being use if necesarry in a particular region) better reflects of what we called "Metropolitab Area". In the MSA list Greater Los Angeles was broken into 3 MSAs while The San Francisco Bay Area was broken into 6 MSAs where in reality their CSAs are more acceptable defenition of their metro areas.

NYC metro

Someone keeps removing Connecticut and adding Pennsylvania to the list of states included in the New York Metropolitan area. The Wikipedia article New York metropolitan area says that "Greater New York City is defined by the U.S. Census as the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT Metropolitan Statistical area...." Pennsylvania is part of the New York-Newark-Bridgeport CSA, but that's not what's being listed here.

I am removing PA and re-adding CT to the list. If someone plans to revert it, please explain it here.

I have reverted your change. This article contains data from the census bureau, specifically the list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). The Census bureau defines New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island metropolitan area as NY-NJ-PA. This is because "Newark-Union, NJ-PA" is part of the metropolitan area and no areas of CT are in this MSA. Note that we are not talking about CSAs, we are talking about MSAs. CSAs typically contain multiple MSAs (micro/metro areas). For example The Washington-Baltimore, DC-MD-VA-WV Combined Statistical Area includes the Baltimore MSA, the Hagerstown, MD MSA and the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA. If this was a list of CSAs by population, your change would be valid. But, it is not. --Gonknet 18:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Errors?

Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA is on there twice. I think the larger one is supposed to be Santa Barbara-Santa Maria, cause I don't think it was on there. I'm not entirely sure about the substitution, but someone who has access to primary data should check it out.

You are correct. I have made the appropriate change. --Gonknet 20:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's still 2... now just a different two... numbers of around 100 and around 170.

You are also correct. Santa Rosa-Petaluma should be 102. --Gonknet 21:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]