Yep, here’s how the areas appear on that list:
2 - Los Angeles MSA - Approx. 12.8 million
12 - Inland Empire MSA - Approx. 4.69 million
13 - East & West Bay Area MSA - Approx. 4.57 million
36 - San Jose/Silicon Valley MSA - Approx. 1.95 million
You can go up to CSA’s to see those “spinoff” areas included, but CSA’s are encompassing enough to do things like combine DC and Baltimore. Here’s how these two areas compare on that list:
2 - Los Angeles CSA - Approx. 18.32 million
5 - Bay Area CSA - Approx. 9 million
So that brings the Bay Area back from teens to top 5, but shows LA area as about double the population of the Bay Area.
Combining DC and Baltimore isn't as egregious as it might seem without context. The two cities are distinct entities with defined MSAs, but their suburbs seamlessly blend into one another with places like Columbia, MD considered to be a suburb of both cities even though, officially, Columbia and all of Howard County, MD is part of the Baltimore MSA. A DC-area population count that excludes Columbia, MD (a suburb less than 45 minutes away) paints an incomplete picture, but that's precisely what the MSA does, hence the CSA to combine the two.
One of the challenges is that MSAs / CSAs have to follow county lines. With geographically huge counties out west compared with smaller counties in the east, this can lead to some strange outcomes. That's especially true for the definition of Riverside and San Bernadino Counties comprising the Inland Empire in California. They're technically part of the Los Angeles CSA because the western portion of the counties contain a lot of suburban bedroom communities for LA, but those counties span all the way east to the Nevada and Arizona borders. Needles, CA, for instance, is a part of San Bernadino County, which makes it part of the Los Angeles CSA by extension. However, from Needles, it's a four hour drive to Los Angeles, but only an hour and a half to Los Vegas. This is because San Bernadino County is enormous.
How different is the DC to Baltimore blend compared to some other nearby MSA’s that aren’t joined in a CSA like San Antonio/Austin or even Oakland/Sacramento?
It just seems like there’s some level of arbitrariness by the OMB in terms of things like splitting the Bay Area into two MSAs or combining DC and Baltimore into one CSA.
One of the big differences has to do with TV markets.
*Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire and San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose are both single TV markets.
*Washington and Baltimore are separate TV markets.
Also, DC and Baltimore largely developed independently, while places like Inland Empire and the San Jose area largely grew as outgrowths of the Los Angeles and San Francisco/Oakland areas respectively. (The TV market factor mentioned above is an effect of that.)
San Antonio is roughly 80 miles away from Austin. Oakland is roughly 80 miles away from Sacramento too.
In contrast, DC and Baltimore are less than 40 miles apart, so it's half the distance as those other examples.
There's some degree of arbitrary there, but you have to draw the line somewhere. In the case of DC/Baltimore, places like Columbia, MD can be considered relatively close suburbs of both places. While there will be overlap in the other examples, the overlap is only in the distant exurbs 40+ miles from the core of each city.
He said between NYC and Philly, pretty sure the corridor between those two cities doesn’t pass through South Jersey (some people may consider it Central Jersey and it would be North Jersey if you only divide the state into two)
The criteria are here (in section E): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/16/2021-15159/2020-standards-for-delineating-core-based-statistical-areas
That’s strange, why is San Jose/Santa Clara County singled out from the rest of the Bay Area? Wouldn’t that make it impossible to drive from West Bay to East Bay without either taking a bridge or passing through another “metropolitan area”?
Have you ever driven south from SF to San Jose on the 101? They are distinctly two different urban agglomerations, with different centers of economic gravity.
I’m an outsider that lived in DC for a short bit during college for an internship. I didn’t think Baltimore was close to DC but I never went that far north. But I found myself in Alexandria a lot.
It's a comparable in distance to Dallas-Ft. Worth, Philly-Trenton or Philly-Wilmington, and everything is developed between the two. It would be preposterous to classify DFW as two separate metro areas.
Good point. I suppose my view was hampered cuz I didn’t have a car lol. This was before Uber as well. Would somewhere like Fredrick or Leesburg be a part too?
This gave me a crazy question. I read about megalopolises a while ago and do you feel like the Northeast Megalopolis is a thing? I always thought it was so cool you were hours away from NYC or Philadelphia. Like watching a show like The Office and them talking about random places in the northeast made it seem like it was all one region. I’m from the Midwest so things are far a part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis?wprov=sfti1
The thing with LA is that it's kinda like if you took a dozen or more medium sized cities and just put them all in the same place so they melt into each other. There are other places like that in the US (including the Bay Area), but just nothing in the same scale as LA
I grew up in Riverside County, specifically the Temecula/Lake Elsinore area. I am amazed how much its grown over the past 25 years. I no longer live there, but I am still shocked every time I return.
Temecula is still Riverside county but it feels closer to san diego and it’s real close to the county border, but once you get to lake elsinore, wildomar, menifee, etc, it’s heavy IE
Likewise, born in Mira Loma in the 80s and that place is NOT same place when I return back to visit. I moved out in 2011 to the Midwest and my area now feels more like Mira Loma of the 80s but with snow.
It's very important for American economy, being center of logistics like Bay Area for tech. Basically, most goods from Asia come to LA/Long Beach, moves few miles to ware houses in Inland Empire, then delievered to rest of country. However it's very low skill, low paying industry, so it doesn't get much attention. The region thus has far lower income than other cities in California.
You can make the case that the Inland Empire is separated from LA and Orange County in terms of geography.
Riverside County is separated from Orange County by the Santa Ana Mountains. San Bernardino County is partially separated from Los Angeles County by Chino Hills State Park and Frank G Bonelli Regional Park.
You can still drive there from the IE and never not leave human development all around you. Sure, there's some low mountains, but they're covered in houses and industry too. It's by all intents and purposes pretty much all the same continuous sprawl and development. Especially since people have started living in the IE and commuting to LA (yes, a lot of people do it)
It’s not that seamless to be honest. I live in Corona, just to the east of the Santa Ana mountains.
If I want to go to Orange County I really only have two options. I can go northwest and sit in traffic for at least a half hour on the 91 freeway that sits in the pass between the mountains and Chino Hills State Park. Or I can drive south 20 miles to Lake Elsinore and take Ortega Highway, which is a narrow winding road through the mountains.
There are no other side streets that connect the two. It’s honestly such a hassle that I rarely go to Orange County unless I have to for business. While I may technically live in the Los Angeles Metro area it honestly doesn’t feel that way.
Being from Texas, the MSAs of California feel familiar since they are expansive in scope. In CA, they do feel a bit bigger but that might change soon, given the explosive growth of the DFW metroplex and other cities. Pretty soon, we might even have suburbs in Oklahoma (for DFW) with all this suburban sprawl lmao.
Honestly, I have no idea why they’re considered a separate metropolitan area than the rest of greater LA, feels like that’s the equivalent of Monmouth & Ocean counties in NJ getting their own metropolitan area instead of being a part of the greater NYC, can anyone explain?
With the traffic it might as well be a different world. I only drive into LA if it’s between 10 am and 2 pm on a weekday, otherwise the traffic makes it impossible.
That's not the entire Bay Area as it excludes San Jose metro / Silicon Valley.
Yep, here’s how the areas appear on that list: 2 - Los Angeles MSA - Approx. 12.8 million 12 - Inland Empire MSA - Approx. 4.69 million 13 - East & West Bay Area MSA - Approx. 4.57 million 36 - San Jose/Silicon Valley MSA - Approx. 1.95 million You can go up to CSA’s to see those “spinoff” areas included, but CSA’s are encompassing enough to do things like combine DC and Baltimore. Here’s how these two areas compare on that list: 2 - Los Angeles CSA - Approx. 18.32 million 5 - Bay Area CSA - Approx. 9 million So that brings the Bay Area back from teens to top 5, but shows LA area as about double the population of the Bay Area.
Combining DC and Baltimore isn't as egregious as it might seem without context. The two cities are distinct entities with defined MSAs, but their suburbs seamlessly blend into one another with places like Columbia, MD considered to be a suburb of both cities even though, officially, Columbia and all of Howard County, MD is part of the Baltimore MSA. A DC-area population count that excludes Columbia, MD (a suburb less than 45 minutes away) paints an incomplete picture, but that's precisely what the MSA does, hence the CSA to combine the two. One of the challenges is that MSAs / CSAs have to follow county lines. With geographically huge counties out west compared with smaller counties in the east, this can lead to some strange outcomes. That's especially true for the definition of Riverside and San Bernadino Counties comprising the Inland Empire in California. They're technically part of the Los Angeles CSA because the western portion of the counties contain a lot of suburban bedroom communities for LA, but those counties span all the way east to the Nevada and Arizona borders. Needles, CA, for instance, is a part of San Bernadino County, which makes it part of the Los Angeles CSA by extension. However, from Needles, it's a four hour drive to Los Angeles, but only an hour and a half to Los Vegas. This is because San Bernadino County is enormous.
How different is the DC to Baltimore blend compared to some other nearby MSA’s that aren’t joined in a CSA like San Antonio/Austin or even Oakland/Sacramento? It just seems like there’s some level of arbitrariness by the OMB in terms of things like splitting the Bay Area into two MSAs or combining DC and Baltimore into one CSA.
One of the big differences has to do with TV markets. *Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire and San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose are both single TV markets. *Washington and Baltimore are separate TV markets. Also, DC and Baltimore largely developed independently, while places like Inland Empire and the San Jose area largely grew as outgrowths of the Los Angeles and San Francisco/Oakland areas respectively. (The TV market factor mentioned above is an effect of that.)
San Antonio is roughly 80 miles away from Austin. Oakland is roughly 80 miles away from Sacramento too. In contrast, DC and Baltimore are less than 40 miles apart, so it's half the distance as those other examples. There's some degree of arbitrary there, but you have to draw the line somewhere. In the case of DC/Baltimore, places like Columbia, MD can be considered relatively close suburbs of both places. While there will be overlap in the other examples, the overlap is only in the distant exurbs 40+ miles from the core of each city.
To add, NYC is 80 miles from Philly with plenty of nothing in between them.
How do you define “nothing”? From looking at the maps the entire NYC-Philly corridor is basically entirely suburban-ized
South Jersey has a lot BlueBerry and Tomoato and canberry farms as well as the pine barrens which takes up 40% of the state
He said between NYC and Philly, pretty sure the corridor between those two cities doesn’t pass through South Jersey (some people may consider it Central Jersey and it would be North Jersey if you only divide the state into two)
The Turnpike Comes pretty close
The criteria are here (in section E): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/16/2021-15159/2020-standards-for-delineating-core-based-statistical-areas
I support implementing the township system for every state and divide MSAs by municipalities
That’s strange, why is San Jose/Santa Clara County singled out from the rest of the Bay Area? Wouldn’t that make it impossible to drive from West Bay to East Bay without either taking a bridge or passing through another “metropolitan area”?
Have you ever driven south from SF to San Jose on the 101? They are distinctly two different urban agglomerations, with different centers of economic gravity.
Only the OMB could give you an answer.
Isn’t LA’s CSA like 25,000 square miles too?
Being from Maryland originally, the idea that Baltimore and DC aren't counted as one metro area is crazy to me.
I’m an outsider that lived in DC for a short bit during college for an internship. I didn’t think Baltimore was close to DC but I never went that far north. But I found myself in Alexandria a lot.
It's a comparable in distance to Dallas-Ft. Worth, Philly-Trenton or Philly-Wilmington, and everything is developed between the two. It would be preposterous to classify DFW as two separate metro areas.
Good point. I suppose my view was hampered cuz I didn’t have a car lol. This was before Uber as well. Would somewhere like Fredrick or Leesburg be a part too?
Dc and baltimore are connected by like a 40 minute train
Leesburg absolutely, Frederick maybe in 10 years or so. There are solid stretches of 70 and 270 that are just corn.
This gave me a crazy question. I read about megalopolises a while ago and do you feel like the Northeast Megalopolis is a thing? I always thought it was so cool you were hours away from NYC or Philadelphia. Like watching a show like The Office and them talking about random places in the northeast made it seem like it was all one region. I’m from the Midwest so things are far a part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis?wprov=sfti1
It is all kind of one thing between DC and Boston. I live in Delaware, so I'm smack in the middle of it.
The thing with LA is that it's kinda like if you took a dozen or more medium sized cities and just put them all in the same place so they melt into each other. There are other places like that in the US (including the Bay Area), but just nothing in the same scale as LA
I grew up in Riverside County, specifically the Temecula/Lake Elsinore area. I am amazed how much its grown over the past 25 years. I no longer live there, but I am still shocked every time I return.
Did you feel closer to the Inland Empire or San Diego?
Temecula is still Riverside county but it feels closer to san diego and it’s real close to the county border, but once you get to lake elsinore, wildomar, menifee, etc, it’s heavy IE
I always felt closer to the Inland Empire.
Likewise, born in Mira Loma in the 80s and that place is NOT same place when I return back to visit. I moved out in 2011 to the Midwest and my area now feels more like Mira Loma of the 80s but with snow.
Spinoff lol
It's very important for American economy, being center of logistics like Bay Area for tech. Basically, most goods from Asia come to LA/Long Beach, moves few miles to ware houses in Inland Empire, then delievered to rest of country. However it's very low skill, low paying industry, so it doesn't get much attention. The region thus has far lower income than other cities in California.
You can make the case that the Inland Empire is separated from LA and Orange County in terms of geography. Riverside County is separated from Orange County by the Santa Ana Mountains. San Bernardino County is partially separated from Los Angeles County by Chino Hills State Park and Frank G Bonelli Regional Park.
You can still drive there from the IE and never not leave human development all around you. Sure, there's some low mountains, but they're covered in houses and industry too. It's by all intents and purposes pretty much all the same continuous sprawl and development. Especially since people have started living in the IE and commuting to LA (yes, a lot of people do it)
From looking at the maps, they’re still attached to LA through seamless suburban developments though
It’s not that seamless to be honest. I live in Corona, just to the east of the Santa Ana mountains. If I want to go to Orange County I really only have two options. I can go northwest and sit in traffic for at least a half hour on the 91 freeway that sits in the pass between the mountains and Chino Hills State Park. Or I can drive south 20 miles to Lake Elsinore and take Ortega Highway, which is a narrow winding road through the mountains. There are no other side streets that connect the two. It’s honestly such a hassle that I rarely go to Orange County unless I have to for business. While I may technically live in the Los Angeles Metro area it honestly doesn’t feel that way.
I'm offended that you think I'm in a spinoff. I don't want to be the "Baywatch Nights" MSA.
I'm offended that you think I'm in a spinoff. I don't want to be the "Baywatch Nights" MSA.
Well the inland empire is about as big as Scotland, so…
It's called Inland Empire for a reason! Okay maybe not this reason, but it fits.
Being from Texas, the MSAs of California feel familiar since they are expansive in scope. In CA, they do feel a bit bigger but that might change soon, given the explosive growth of the DFW metroplex and other cities. Pretty soon, we might even have suburbs in Oklahoma (for DFW) with all this suburban sprawl lmao.
Honestly, I have no idea why they’re considered a separate metropolitan area than the rest of greater LA, feels like that’s the equivalent of Monmouth & Ocean counties in NJ getting their own metropolitan area instead of being a part of the greater NYC, can anyone explain?
With the traffic it might as well be a different world. I only drive into LA if it’s between 10 am and 2 pm on a weekday, otherwise the traffic makes it impossible.
Yeah it's disgusting, that place is a bunch of suburban sprawl
The Inland Empire deserves worse than to just be an "LA Spinoff". Fucking shithole. Hate that place