Posted March 25, 200817 yr I originally posted this at skyscrapercity, but someone asked me to repost it here, so here you go. I don't have Ohio's smaller metros with it, but anyone should be able to quickly add them. I just did a quick analysis of the county level population estimates to calculate MSA population growth for Midwest metros of 1 million plus population (plus Louisville). Here are the results. Change in MSA population 2006-2007 (in percentage rank order, total change in parentheses). For ties, broken by ordering in decreasing absolute change. 1. Indianapolis - 1.5% (24,705) 2. Kansas City - 1.2% (24,087) 3. Minneapolis - 1.1% (36,200) 4. Columbus - 1.1% (19,774) 5. Louisville - 1.1% (13,311) 6. Chicago - 0.7% (66,231) 7. Cincinnati - 0.6% (12,553) 8. St. Louis - 0.4% (9,627) 9. Milwaukee - 0.3% (4,347) 10. Cleveland - (0.4%) (-8,848) 11. Detroit - (0.6%) (-27,314) The United States as a whole grew by 1% last year. So you can see that about half of these cities exceeded the national rate. The following cities added more people this year than they did last (or lost fewer people): Columbus Louisville Kansas City Minneapolis Cleveland Chicago Of course that means the following cities did worse than last year: Indianapolis Cincinnati Milwaukee Detroit St. Louis If the trend continues, Kansas City would pass Indianapolis in total adds next year. Here is the list sorted by raw quantitative change. 1. Chicago - 66,231 2. Minneapolis - 36,200 3. Indianapolis - 24,705 4. Kansas City - 24,087 5. Columbus - 19,774 6. Louisville - 13,311 7. Cincinnati - 12,553 8 - St. Louis - 9,627 9. Milwaukee - 4,347 10. Cleveland - (8,848) 11. Detroit - (27,314) And lastly, here are the metro areas ordered by total population 1. Chicago - 9,524,673 2. Detroit - 4,467,592 3. Minneapolis - 3,208,212 4. St. Louis - 2,707,885 5. Cincinnati - 2,125,104 6. Cleveland - 2,096,471 7. Kansas City - 2,004,680 8. Columbus - 1,754,337 9. Milwaukee - 1,739,497 10. Indianapolis - 1,695,037 11. Louisville - 1,233,735 Congratulations to Kansas City for breaking the 2 million barrier. Also note that last year Columbus passed Milwaukee. I calculated this myself, so info is not guaranteed, YMMV, etc. In particular, if I got the county list wrong, the numbers may be off. I can try to investigate if someone flags an error.
March 25, 200817 yr where did these numbers come from? It looks like Cincinnati is the largest metro in Ohio based on these figures.
March 25, 200817 yr I calculated them myself based on the just released county level population estimates from the Census Bureau as of 7/1/07.
March 25, 200817 yr It is true that Cincinnati is bigger. On the other hand, Cleveland has a five county MSA whereas Cincinnati has something like 14 counties in three states in its MSA.
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: what was Cleveland's population growth in 2006? I thought 2007 was worse... but apparently I'm remembering things wrong.
March 25, 200817 yr no question, but cincinnati has a lot of kentucky counties and they are pretty small
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga.
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: what was Cleveland's population growth in 2006? I thought 2007 was worse... but apparently I'm remembering things wrong. Between 2005 and 2006 Cleveland's MSA population declined by 13,592, or -0.6%.
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga. I think if Akron was as small as a Hamilton... it would definately be part of Cleveland MSA... but Akron city is almost on the same tier as Cleveland city... so its size affords it enough "independence" to be considered its own MSA... as the immediate Akron area is a major employment center... of course... there is enough connectivity between Cleveland and Akron to warrant a CSA.
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga. Butler county was not counted in Cincinnati's MSA up until about 2000.
March 25, 200817 yr Butler county was not counted in Cincinnati's MSA up until about 2000. However, Cincinnati-Hamilton was a CMSA, which at the time was the most commonly used measure, if a city was in a CMSA. There was not as great a distinction between a CMSA and an MSA as there now is between an MSA and CSA.
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: have you calculated "components of population change", such as: births/deaths and migration? those offer interesting insights into population growth
March 25, 200817 yr Your post is appreciated, but I sense this is going to turn into a pissing match and something is missing. Those numbers don't seem accurate.
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: have you calculated "components of population change", such as: births/deaths and migration? those offer interesting insights into population growth I don't have that information handy, sorry.
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: have you calculated "components of population change", such as: births/deaths and migration? those offer interesting insights into population growth I don't have that information handy, sorry. it's on the Census County Estimates website
March 25, 200817 yr arenn: what fuels Indy's explosive growth? I would not characterize Indy's growth as "explosive". Most of the cities at the top are clustered in a narrow range. Indy is not a high growth city by any means. It isn't hard to notice that three of the top four cities in the Midwest for growth are state capitals, which has to be a factor. The development pattern in Indianapolis is for all practical purposes identical to Columbus.
March 25, 200817 yr Metro numbers are not out yet. They are determining if a counties will be added or subtracted to metro area. I think that comes out in the summer.
March 25, 200817 yr it's on the Census County Estimates website Interesting. Unfortunately, I don't get paid to research population statistics. So I'm only able to do a limited amount in my spare time. I'm sure there are a lot of good nuggets out there, but really analyzing the data requires more time than I have available. Do you have any hypotheses about drivers?
March 25, 200817 yr It is true that Cincinnati is bigger. On the other hand, Cleveland has a five county MSA whereas Cincinnati has something like 14 counties in three states in its MSA. keep in mind that many of those northern Kentucky counties are very tiny... nonetheless... Cincy MSA does cover more area...
March 25, 200817 yr Your post is appreciated, but I sense this is going to turn into a pissing match and something is missing. Those numbers don't seem accurate. If you see a number you don't think looks right, let me know and I can double check and/or post the raw data I used. I created the list using the most recent county level population estimates from the Census Bureau, along with whatever MSA definitions I could find. The most likely source of an error would be incorrectly including or excluding a county from an MSA. However, the total numbers look broadly correct to me.
March 25, 200817 yr Cuyahoga County is 1246 sq miles, Kenton County is 146 sq miles, if you factor out the water, it is still 468 to 162
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga. I think if Akron was as small as a Hamilton... it would definately be part of Cleveland MSA... but Akron city is almost on the same tier as Cleveland city... so its size affords it enough "independence" to be considered its own MSA... as the immediate Akron area is a major employment center... of course... there is enough connectivity between Cleveland and Akron to warrant a CSA. true but summit county benefits from celveland sprawl. These people aren't suddenly out of the Cleveland Metro just because they moved to Summit County. Many probably commute downtown, etc. How is it handled for a place like SF-Oakland? Is Oakland too big to be considered apart of SF?
March 25, 200817 yr I wonder why it takes so long to get the urbanized numbers. That is done every 10 years for some reason. Why can't they estimate that?
March 25, 200817 yr true but summit county benefits from celveland sprawl. These people aren't suddenly out of the Cleveland Metro just because they moved to Summit County. Many probably commute downtown, etc. How is it handled for a place like SF-Oakland? Is Oakland too big to be considered apart of SF? The Bay Area is a great example of how things break down a bit. The Bay Area consists of two MSA's: the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont MSA and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA. The San-Francisco-Oakland-Fremont MSA has two Metropolitan Divisions: the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City division and the Oakland-Fremont-Hayward division.
March 25, 200817 yr I wonder why it takes so long to get the urbanized numbers. That is done every 10 years for some reason. Why can't they estimate that? The urbanized area population doesn't follow a political jurisdiction boundary, which probably makes it a bit difficult to get the information. It's a shame, because this is the most useful measure of city size. It would be nice if more data were available sliced by urbanized area. Even that has its faults. As with the MSA definitions, local requests can tweak the rules. Two examples here. The Indianapolis MSA used to include Madison County (home of the city of Anderson). But Anderson wanted to be their own MSA, so the Census Bureau ejected them from the Indianapolis MSA at their request. Also, parts of Marion County, Indiana are clearly still rural, and so should not be in the urbanized area. However, since Indianapolis is a consolidated city, they petitioned to have all of Marion County included in the urbanized area, and they succeeded in that as well.
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga. I think if Akron was as small as a Hamilton... it would definately be part of Cleveland MSA... but Akron city is almost on the same tier as Cleveland city... so its size affords it enough "independence" to be considered its own MSA... as the immediate Akron area is a major employment center... of course... there is enough connectivity between Cleveland and Akron to warrant a CSA. true but summit county benefits from celveland sprawl. These people aren't suddenly out of the Cleveland Metro just because they moved to Summit County. Many probably commute downtown, etc. How is it handled for a place like SF-Oakland? Is Oakland too big to be considered apart of SF? I'm no expert... but it always seemed to me that the northern tier of Summit County municipalities was more aligned with Cleveland than Akron... if you were to do a sub-county analysis of "metros"... these suburbs could possibly be counted as part of "Cleveland" instead of "Akron"... but county level is the unit of analysis... so there's bound to be some overlap sometimes.
March 25, 200817 yr ^Isn't San Jose listed Ahead of San Francisco now? They are completely separate MSA's now.
March 25, 200817 yr I posted this on the Cincy population thread, but here are the components for the metro. This would take a little time for someone to do all the metros listed. The changes are listed in "number per thousand" format. I show a net of 12,566 - slightly different from the number above (probably rounding). The biggest concern for Cincinnati is that we are still on the negative side of US Migration. Not a big number, but it had been trending down and looked like it might be better this year. There are still a lot of US cities that have this issue, including places like DC, but they make up for it with an even larger number of births over deaths and very large international migration: Births Deaths US Migration International Migration Total 30011 18042 -1768 2365 12,566
March 25, 200817 yr Also a factor has to be the subtraction of Ashtabula county and its 102,000 residents from the Cleveland MSA around this time in 2002-2003. The population is still declining, but that "accelerated" Cincy's gain.
March 25, 200817 yr Just so we're clear on Ohio's MSA and CSA boundaries: These boundaries are determined by commuting patterns. So some metros have massive MSA and CSA boundaries for the fact that they are the dominant economic force in the region...meaning that the surrounding areas depend on this job/economic base for their own vitality. In NE Ohio, Akron would seemingly be able to stand alone if Cleveland fell off the face of the earth. Whereas Hamilton and Middletown would not stand nearly as strong if Cincinnati were to disappear.
March 25, 200817 yr right, but I think all anyone is saying is that many Summity County northern suburbs should be counted in the Cleveland metro, not in the Akron metro. This can be said for many northern Warren County sprawlers as well in terms of Cincinnati/Dayton.
March 25, 200817 yr If that map is accurate, I think I made one error in my calculations by not including Bracken County, Kentucky in the Cincy area. However, that's a tiny county with a nearly immaterial population.
March 25, 200817 yr If that map is accurate, I think I made one error in my calculations by not including Bracken County, Kentucky in the Cincy area. However, that's a tiny county with a nearly immaterial population. The map is straight from the Census' data. It was in the form of a pdf when I downloaded it and I just cropped it down and made it a jpg.
March 25, 200817 yr Butler county was not counted in Cincinnati's MSA up until about 2000. However, Cincinnati-Hamilton was a CMSA, which at the time was the most commonly used measure, if a city was in a CMSA. There was not as great a distinction between a CMSA and an MSA as there now is between an MSA and CSA. Does that mean they are not using CMSA designations anymore? The Cleveland CMSA included a much larger swath of land. Even still, Cleveland's CMSA only covers 7 counties, while I think Cincy's covers 13 counties. If we were to expand Cleveland's metropolitan area to include all 13 counties in the Northeast corner of the state (the vast majority of which are rural), the combined population would be around 3.9 million. Even Cuyahoga County and the 6 counties that lie directly adjacent to it have a combined population of over 2.75 million. None of this is to say that Cleveland's metro is in fact bigger than Cincy's ... According to the Census Bureau's definitions, it's apparently not. Just pointing out that it's a bit of an apple-to-orange comparison largely tied to what the federal government believes is functioning as a single economy and what are separate, autonomous economies. According to the Census Bureau's definitions, Cincy is a slightly larger metropolitan area, but Cleveland's metropolitan population is concentrated in a much smaller number of counties (thought this doesn't necessarily mean that the Cleveland metropolitan area is denser; while this is likely the case, this might not be true if the counties in Cincy's metropolitan area were geographically smaller than those in Cleveland's).
March 25, 200817 yr There are no more CMSA's. Rather, there are MSA's and CSA's. CSA's are sort of roughly like the old CMSA's, except that they are much larger entities in most cases. MSA's can be made of metropolitan divisions, but no one really appears to pay attention to that. There is also a new concept of a "micropolitan area" Cincinnati has way more counties, but in fairness, most of them have negligible population (e.g., Ohio County, Indiana). The OMB trend of adding lots of very rural counties to MSA's, is not one I'm a fan of. As I said, urbanized area is probably the best apples-to-apples comparator of city population. Another measure I quite like is the BEA Economic Area, which is effectively the functional economic unit. It is generally more expansive than even the CSA, but I believe gets the CSA concept more right.
March 25, 200817 yr Cincinnati has way more counties, but in fairness, most of them have negligible population (e.g., Ohio County, Indiana). Bingo. Those outer counties count like, what, 2,000 people? So really, a core-to-core county measure up would be more accurate (re: Hamilton + Butler + Warren + Clermont + the NKY ones bordering the river [which basically are just one county; look how small they are!] "vs." Cuyahoga + Lorain + Lake + Geauga + Medina). "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 25, 200817 yr yea yea, bla bla. Cincinnati metro is bigger than Clevelands but come on, those Cleveland numbers don't include Akron/Summit County. It would be like not including Hamilton/Middletown in Cincy's numbers really, seeing as how Summit County is immediately south of Cuyahoga. I think if Akron was as small as a Hamilton... it would definately be part of Cleveland MSA... but Akron city is almost on the same tier as Cleveland city... so its size affords it enough "independence" to be considered its own MSA... as the immediate Akron area is a major employment center... of course... there is enough connectivity between Cleveland and Akron to warrant a CSA. true but summit county benefits from celveland sprawl. These people aren't suddenly out of the Cleveland Metro just because they moved to Summit County. Many probably commute downtown, etc. How is it handled for a place like SF-Oakland? Is Oakland too big to be considered apart of SF? I'm no expert... but it always seemed to me that the northern tier of Summit County municipalities was more aligned with Cleveland than Akron... if you were to do a sub-county analysis of "metros"... these suburbs could possibly be counted as part of "Cleveland" instead of "Akron"... but county level is the unit of analysis... so there's bound to be some overlap sometimes. Everything North and East of Hudson is aligned with Cleveland (Macedonia, Twinsburg City & Township, Northfield, etc.) Hudson is a mixed bag. South of Hudson there are still plenty of people who work in Metro Cleveland, that being said the same thing can be said for those northern cities concerning Akron. Frankly with jobs being so tight I see cars from Mahoning, Stark and Columbiana county at the business next to where I work in Twinsburg.
March 25, 200817 yr right, but I think all anyone is saying is that many Summity County northern suburbs should be counted in the Cleveland metro, not in the Akron metro. This can be said for many northern Warren County sprawlers as well in terms of Cincinnati/Dayton. True, but the same thing could be said for a large number of communities in Medina coutny, or the more curious decision of Akron and Canton not being a MSA/CSA despite being much closer and connected than Akron and Cleveland.
March 25, 200817 yr These boundaries are determined by commuting patterns. So some metros have massive MSA and CSA boundaries for the fact that they are the dominant economic force in the region...meaning that the surrounding areas depend on this job/economic base for their own vitality. Before I start searching, does anyone know if this underlying "commuting patterns" data is available anywhere on the web? I would be interested in taking a look at it just to balance against my anecdotal experience. I know (and have run into) many people who are commuting to the Cleveland CSA daily for work that live outside the CSA. From Mahoning, Ashtabula and Erie -- I've run into three people from Erie County in the last two weeks alone. Just curious what the actual numbers might be.
March 25, 200817 yr Folks, discuss the population census for Ohio in the "Ohio Census CSA & MSA: 2007" thread and discuss the Midwest and it's population growth in here. Thanks. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
March 27, 200817 yr Official totals are out, with corrections to my errors: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/011671.html
March 28, 200817 yr If that map is accurate, I think I made one error in my calculations by not including Bracken County, Kentucky in the Cincy area. However, that's a tiny county with a nearly immaterial population. The map is straight from the Census' data. It was in the form of a pdf when I downloaded it and I just cropped it down and made it a jpg. Do you a link for the original file? I'm curious for other cities and I'm a bafoon on the census website.
March 28, 200817 yr great info arenn, thx. just a suggestion, but i have always thought that when talking about metro area populations, no matter how they are divided up, it pays to also include the total square mileage of each category in the discussion. a bonus of that is we can quickly get a bit of an estimate of density as well.
March 28, 200817 yr * Los Angeles - 33,954 mi² * Dallas - 12,360 mi² * New York City - 11,842 mi² * Houston - 10,908 mi² * Chicago - 10,874 mi² * Atlanta - 10,429 mi² * Washington/Baltimore: 9,682 mi² * Minneapolis - 9,560 mi² * St. Louis - 9,102 mi² * Denver - 9,085 mi² * San Francisco/SanJose - 8,791 mi² * Seattle/Tacoma - 8,194 mi² * Boston - 7,227 mi² * Sacramento - 6,784 mi² * Charlotte - 6,493 mi² * Detroit - 5,847 mi² * Pittsburgh - 5,646 mi² * Miami - 5,159 mi² (MSA) * Philadelphia: 5,124 mi² * Cincinnati - 4,826 mi² * Cleveland - 3,623 mi²
March 28, 200817 yr thx good start unusualfire. that is square mileage for each msa, correct? i cant tell from looking at the census map, but from your numbers it looks like cinci's msa has over 1k square miles of acreage more than cleveland's, is that so? also, is the square mileage of the msa's for the other midwest cities on arenn's lists easily available? if so could you or someone list those too? i looked myself, but couldn't find it. thx.
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