METROPOLITAN AREA or CITY PROPER?

[Daniel Fiddler]

Do you rank cities by METROPOLITAN AREA or CITY PROPER?

For example, in the combined three states of Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee...

The five largest METROPOLITAN AREAS are:

1.  Atlanta, Georgia  6,209,406
2.  Miami, Florida  6,138,333
3.  Tampa, Florida  4,734,037
4.  Orlando, Florida  3,833,531
5.  Nashville, Tennessee  2,174,887

The five largest CITIES (by CITY PROPER) are:

1.  Jacksonville, Florida  949,611
2.  Nashville, Tennessee 689,447
3.  Memphis, Tennessee 633,104
4.  Atlanta, Georgia 498,715
5.  Miami, Florida 442,241

[JayhawkCO]

I voted both because it depends on the context.  That said, I generally refer to the metro area far more than city since when people ask where I'm from when traveling, I'm far more likely to say Denver as opposed to Aurora.  I grew up "in the Twin Cities" more than I grew up in Hastings, Eden Prairie, and Eagan.  I used to live in Kansas City, despite actually living in Overland Park or Mission.

Chris

[kphoger]

It depends on how exactly I want to manipulate the data to prove my point.   

[plain]

I voted both simply because it will boil down to what exactly is the topic in a discussion.

[webny99]

Almost always the metro area because of the tendency of cities in the south to skew things by annexing their suburbs.

Case in point: Look at Jacksonville compared to Atlanta. There's no way Jacksonville should be ranked higher than Atlanta in any size or status based exercise. It's almost laughable.

[Rothman]

Both.

[SP Cook]

Who actually lives in the city, rather than the suburbs, is relevant only when talking about city politics.  The metro area is the measure of how big and important a city is.

[JayhawkCO]

Who actually lives in the city, rather than the suburbs, is relevant only when talking about city politics.  The metro area is the measure of how big and important a city is.

But somehow irrelevant for some members when talking about control cities. 

Chris

[sprjus4]

When comparing something like control cities, I think looking at the metro overall is important to get an idea of the importance, the significance, etc. of the area overall, not just city limits.

When I think Atlanta, for example, I think of the city proper and all of its sprawling suburbs stretching outside the Beltway. I may not be in Atlanta itself, but I'm in the general vicinity of what is known as "Atlanta"  effectively.

[Roadgeekteen]

Metro Area, city limits will make you think that Jacksonville is the most important place in Florida.

[Flint1979]

Urban Area. Metro's can be vast in land area. Urban Area gives you more of an idea of how large a place is.

[US 89]

Metropolitan areas have their downfalls too - largely related to the census bureau's strict definitions of metro areas using county lines. Look at Salt Lake City, for example. The city proper has only about 200k of Salt Lake County's 1.2 million people... but it doesn't stop there. The metro officially includes Salt Lake and Tooele Counties, but I don't think anybody disputes that southern Davis County is made up of suburbs and bedroom communities with a primary connection to Salt Lake City (source: I grew up in that area). However, because most of the economy of Davis County itself is up north, the entire county gets counted as part of the Ogden metropolitan area.

You could also argue over whether Ogden and Provo should even be considered separate metropolitan areas instead of lumping them in with Salt Lake City, but that's probably an issue for another thread...

[kphoger]

You could also argue over whether Ogden and Provo should even be considered separate metropolitan areas instead of lumping them in with Salt Lake City, but that's probably an issue for another thread...

I think it's entirely appropriate for the thread.  Such would be a good reason not to use MSAs to begin with.

[thspfc]

Almost exclusively metropolitan area. The only time city populations are relevant is when comparing other per capita statistics of two cities, such as crime rate, income, property value, etc. Otherwise I don't even look at city populations, and if I'm told to find "the population of Chicago" in that vague manner, I will use the metropolitan population.

With that being said, metropolitan populations can still be misleading sometimes. Some cities have outlying counties with very little relation to the city beyond it being "the closest major city" included in their metropolitan populations. More commonly, some cities have a couple of suburban communities in the corner of a certain county, yet that entire county is in the metropolitan area.

But when comparing the size of two places, metropolitan population is a better stat 100% of the time.

[hotdogPi]

ALL CAPS or all lowercase?

[thspfc]

ALL CAPS or all lowercase?

ALL CAPS is more unnecessary and takes more effort, but all lowercase is more annoying.

[kphoger]

ALL CAPS ... takes more effort

How much effort does it really take to hit the CapsLock key on the keyboard?  In fact, more often than not at work, I have CapsLock on already.  It actually takes slightly more effort for me to not type in all caps on here if I'm at work.

[jeffandnicole]

Based in this, I can name random states to skew my thought.

I like the beach so I'm going to the Morgantown WV area. Nevermind I'm really one state over, in the opposite side, in MD.

[Rothman]

Metropolitan areas have their downfalls too - largely related to the census bureau's strict definitions of metro areas using county lines. Look at Salt Lake City, for example. The city proper has only about 200k of Salt Lake County's 1.2 million people... but it doesn't stop there. The metro officially includes Salt Lake and Tooele Counties, but I don't think anybody disputes that southern Davis County is made up of suburbs and bedroom communities with a primary connection to Salt Lake City (source: I grew up in that area). However, because most of the economy of Davis County itself is up north, the entire county gets counted as part of the Ogden metropolitan area.

You could also argue over whether Ogden and Provo should even be considered separate metropolitan areas instead of lumping them in with Salt Lake City, but that's probably an issue for another thread...

Especially since Point of the Mountain doesn't have a point anymore.

[empirestate]

Do you rank cities by METROPOLITAN AREA or CITY PROPER?

I rank cities by cities.

And of course, I rank metropolitan areas by metropolitan areas. They're separate ideas–there isn't an instance I can think of where I'd use one to rank the other. For example, if you asked me which is the most populous city in Kansas, I'd say Wichita rather than Kansas City. And similarly, I wouldn't tell you that Massachusetts' largest city is Cambridge, even though Cambridge is in the state's largest metro area.

Bringing it on topic, for the same reason I'd say that I-80 goes to Chicago and to New York, even though it goes neither to the city of Chicago nor the city of New York. Even though I use the name of a city to refer to a metro area, I'm still naming the metro area and not the city, just as when I say "Hampton Roads", I'm referring to the metro area of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, not to the city of Hampton Roads.

[Roadgeekteen]

Do you rank cities by METROPOLITAN AREA or CITY PROPER?

I rank cities by cities.

And of course, I rank metropolitan areas by metropolitan areas. They're separate ideas–there isn't an instance I can think of where I'd use one to rank the other. For example, if you asked me which is the most populous city in Kansas, I'd say Wichita rather than Kansas City. And similarly, I wouldn't tell you that Massachusetts' largest city is Cambridge, even though Cambridge is in the state's largest metro area.

Bringing it on topic, for the same reason I'd say that I-80 goes to Chicago and to New York, even though it goes neither to the city of Chicago nor the city of New York. Even though I use the name of a city to refer to a metro area, I'm still naming the metro area and not the city, just as when I say "Hampton Roads", I'm referring to the metro area of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, not to the city of Hampton Roads.

Cambridge? Huh? Cambridge is part of the Boston metro.

[english si]

Urban Area. Metro's can be vast in land area. Urban Area gives you more of an idea of how large a place is.

Urban areas can be a real pig. The River Mersey at Liverpool is slightly wider than the cut off for urban areas in the UK. This means that Birkenhead and other Wirral suburbs are in a separate urban area, despite functioning as Liverpool.

Of course, if you did increase the urban area distance that little bit, then Liverpool would conjoin with Manchester, and you'd get a different incorrect figure for Liverpool's size.

Travel to Work Areas might give a more accurate picture. Which means that 'Slough and Heathrow' is the fourth largest city in the UK - consisting of lots of West London suburbs and a some towns dotted in the green belt (which was designed to stop London's urban area sprawling, and created long commutes from developments in holes around / just beyond the edge). It's not a coherent city as much as a lot of towns that are all generally considered London/London commuter towns except that fewer than a quarter of residents commute into the London TTWA, instead working in some of London's overspill/out-of-town business areas or for London's biggest airport and its support industries. Is it just part of London? Ditto other similar London-adjacent TTWAs. The thing is that these places, especially the exurbs, have their own identity (part of which is often "not London, just nearby") though the TTWAs don't tend to, being polycentric. I'd imagine Maidenhead and Uxbridge residents would think of the link between their MPs well before than their functionally being in the same tight economic unit (but then, given Slough and Heathrow are what link them that way, it's something naturally suppressed as you wouldn't want to think of them!).

As for city proper, my not-big town proper (bigger urban area that's two towns and two+ villages) has more people living it than London proper. London, the city of, is about a thousanth of the size of London (whether the urban area, regional boundaries or Met area - about 10 million, 9 million and 14 million respectively).

[DTComposer]

I tend to use urban areas rather than either cities or metropolitan areas, but even then, I think urban area boundaries can be flawed because of their single data point (commuting), even when it blatantly divides continuous urban development; and their (understandable) inability to incorporate more "fuzzy" data - shopping and leisure patterns, media markets, coverage by transit districts or other quasi-governmental agencies, etc.

California highlights the flaws in using any of these geographies:
- San Jose might have ~140K more people than San Francisco, but there's no "real-world" metric in which San Jose is considered the "more important" city - historically, culturally, economically, etc.
- San Bernardino County. Needles is part of the Riverside-San Bernardino Metropolitan Area.
- Commuting data is what keeps San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose from being one urban area (and one metropolitan area), even though it is continuous urban development (and has been for decades), and all "real-world" considerations have them as one (multi-core) area. Similar story happens in greater L.A.

[Daniel Fiddler]

Indeed, very true.  The large counties in the West (especially California) do skew the size of metropolitan areas.

I do combine San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland into one metropolitan area personally and (believe it or not) even Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino, although even though Needles is in what I consider the LA metropolitan area (by county), I sure as hell would not desire to commute into LA or even San Bernardino every day from there, I'm not sure I'd care to commute to / from Barstow!

Although in the East, counties are much smaller, metropolitan areas are much smaller for the most part.

[ethanhopkin14]

It all depends on what I am talking about.  If I am naming a given state's largest city, than the city with the most people living in the city limits is the one that is named. 

The largest city in Texas is Houston, but there are more people living in The Metroplex.  If you want to know the largest city, then the answer is Houston.  If you want to know the largest metro area, then DFW is your answer. 

I personally like looking at city population over metro areas because there is an definite line in the sand with city population.  Metro areas and how everyone draws them changes constantly depending on how they want to skew the numbers. 

Two things in Texas: San Marcos, TX is considered, sometimes, to be in the San Antonio MSA and the Austin MSA.  So how can I be both?

The El Paso MSA is all over the map.  Sunland Park, NM borders the city limits of El Paso, yet is not counted as part of the MSA for El Paso because it is in Donna Ana County, New Mexico so it is counted as part of the Las Cruces MSA, despite being 40 miles away from Las Cruces.  Then you have Ciudad Juarez across the Mexico border that isn't included in the El Paso MSA.  I understand there is an international border so counting people in two countries has legal issues and are separate censuses, but it's foolish not to count that population because those people are all living in the same space.  The MSA is also there to give you an idea of how many people you will encounter when you visit an area in terms traffic, crime, entertainment, etc.  You can't just say there are only 700,000 people in the El Paso area, and there are another 2 million people living across the border, but just ignore them.  They don't count, although they are going to be driving, shopping and walking along with you so you will experience congestion that is closer to a multi-million person population city; they live in another country so they aren't really there.