Is there any reason why the census bureau does have this twin cities as a combined metro area? I've always been confused by this.

Do you mean doesn't?

Lol, that's exactly what I mean. I can't think of any other cities in this country that are 15 minutes apart and that share an airport(among other things) that are not in the same MSA, let alone CMSA.

Lol, that's exactly what I mean. I can't think of any other cities in this country that are 15 minutes apart and that share an airport(among other things) that are not in the same MSA, let alone CMSA.

 

I gotta agree with you. Especially with the growth of Green Twp. over the last 15 years, it should be a no-brainer. If Washington and Baltimore can merge...it's pretty silly to me why Akron-Canton can't. But the boys at the census seem paranoid of merging anything Ohio (i.e Cincy-Dayton, Akron-Canton...which would arguably make it Cleveland-Akron-Canton).

Good point, I think the main concern may be a Cleveland-Akron-Canton CMSA, which is still absurd to me considering Canton is still a part of the same media market, and on a good day one can make it from Canton to Downtown Cleveland in under 1 hour.

My bet is that by the 2010 census Cleveland-Akron-Canton will be a CMSA, with Canton being about 45=50 minutes from dowtown Cleveland it is weird that it isn't included, i.e. Atlanta and other cities CMSAs include communities well over an hours drive from the central downtown.  Cleveland-Akron-Canton is around 3.2 million.

I'm not a census-ologist, but there actually are "tests" that the census performs to see if two cities really are linked (i.e. commuting patterns, worksite, home address).

 

Maybe one of our GIS dorks can chime in.

^ i think you have a strong point there. im thinking of the other two twin cities, lorain-elyria. their borders are continguous at some points, so they are even closer together than akron-canton, but more to pope's point, they definately share strong commuting patterns w/ elyria getting a lot of lorainites working down there due to elyria industry like bendix, invacare, etc. and also the lorain county seat related jobs. used to be more the other way around of course when lorain had all the heavy industry, but those days are long gone. i believe the census looks closely at that kind of residency/commuting pattern stuff.

 

 

 

Also the fact that Lorain and Elyria are in the same county.

Excuse me for butting in!

 

1. It seems that, lately, with the growth of Akron-Canton Airport and the overall growth of the surrounding area, there are some new patterns developing. Clevelanders are utilizing that airport more and more. Judging by the traffic between Akron and Canton, I would guess that those patterns are already established between those two cities and between Akron and Cleveland, as well. But probably not between Cleveland and Canton. I think there are probably few ties between those two cities, other than the airport.

 

2. Does anyone think there may be Federal Government pressure to not include all three because of the increase in Fed Dollars that would have to be forked out to the area?