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Originally Posted by 420x
Two counties that missed only one single requirement by less than one percent still count as suburbs. After all, 1/3 of Ottawa county lives directly on the border of Kent County and it is not part of the MSA... Lets get real here.
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So you’re saying that cities such as Allegan, Grand Haven, Muskegon and Holland, a couple of which even have their own defined MSAs, are not distinct cities, but are just suburbs of GR?
I think it’s fair to say these cities do have a strong relationship (economic and otherwise) being in close proximity, and thus it makes sense to combine them into a Combined Statistical Area, but to say it’s one continuous metropolitan area is a bit of a stretch.
I can’t speak to the criteria, just to what I know from living there. For example, go to the hybrid-satellite view on Google maps, and look at the urbanized (gray) areas of each of those cities. You’ll notice they’re bordered with very large rural areas (green) that separate them from Grand Rapids and its suburbs. Contrast that against Detroit or Chicago where the urban areas are uninterrupted.