Possible changes to urbanized area defnitions.

[unusualfire]

There is an ongoing proposal for possible changes to urban area definition. The most notable of the new proposed criteria shows New York, Philly and Hartford would be one single urbanized area. That's almost 30 million people.

For a listing of the many changes and potential new urbanized area's go here. http://www.federalregister.gov/artic...he-2010-census

[LMich]

Interesting. Michiganders had speculated that Detroit could potentially spawl into Ann Arbor (+280,000) and South Lyon-Howell-Brighton (+106,139), though, I'm doubting it more, now, considering the considerable slowdown in growth in the second half of the decade. But, I'd not realized the area could possibly sprawl to Port Huron.


Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget

You can see Ann Arbor and South Lyon-Howell-Brighton off to the west nearly already abutting the city, but Port Huron would be way up to the northeast (you can see a piece of it). It looks like they are saying it could connect through the tiniest of slivers of land that follows the water, which is how most of the Port Huron urban cluster looks, anyway. You can also see a sliver of the Flint Urban Area poking towards Detroit in the far northwest.

[mhays]

It would be interesting to see graduated versions. Call one version the UA for administrative purposes, but show us what they'd look like with minimum densities of 2,000 as well as 1,000 for example.

[HurricaneHugo]

I wonder why they have Mission Viejo in San Diego's UA instead of LA's...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by LMich

You can see Ann Arbor and South Lyon-Howell-Brighton off to the west nearly already abutting the city, but Port Huron would be way up to the northeast (you can see a piece of it). It looks like they are saying it could connect through the tiniest of slivers of land that follows the water, which is how most of the Port Huron urban cluster looks, anyway. You can also see a sliver of the Flint Urban Area poking towards Detroit in the far northwest.

It's pretty interesting that the Detroit urban area has nearly sprawled north to Port Huron, but Monroe County is largely un-urbanized. I wonder what's the reason?

[fflint]

I love the plan to split San Francisco's UA apart--I think the "San" Urbanized Area is going to kick the "Francisco" Urbanized Area's ass in growth over the next decade!

[pesto]

Originally Posted by HurricaneHugo

I wonder why they have Mission Viejo in San Diego's UA instead of LA's...

This is probably the result of their being no meaningful way of splitting the Santa Barbara to SD region. SB-Ventura-Camarillo-Thousand Oaks-LA-LB-Anaheim-Irvine-Mission Viejo-San Clemente-Oceanside-Escondido-Encinitas-Del Mar-SD is a string of 100k plus cities (mixed with about 200 other cities) with their own employment bases and residential areas but shared cultural amenities and easy movement between nodes. Include Tijuana and coastal Mexico to get a full understanding.

SM-LA-Pasadena-SGV-Pomona-Ontario-Fontana-SB-Riverside is a similar east-west string. Any divisions are artificial.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It's pretty interesting that the Detroit urban area has nearly sprawled north to Port Huron, but Monroe County is largely un-urbanized. I wonder what's the reason?

Probably because sprawl follows suburban jobs and prosperity, and Downriver is traditionally the most blue collar and least job-rich portion of the metro.

I recently drove from Oakland County to Lansing. I'm surprised Lansing isn't more connected to Detroit than Port Huron. There are job centers and exurban sprawl along the entire corridor.

Brighton, 50 miles from Detroit, is incredibly built-up. It doesn't even look exurban. At least from the freeway, it looks the same as Novi. And the only breaks between Brighton and the traditional suburbs are the Metroparks.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by fflint

I love the plan to split San Francisco's UA apart--I think the "San" Urbanized Area is going to kick the "Francisco" Urbanized Area's ass in growth over the next decade!

I read through most of that PDF and am slightly confused...on one hand they talk about moving the boundaries of urban areas around so that they run along county lines, which would result in the split between the SF and SJ urban areas moving up a bit to the San Mateo/Santa Clara county line (lame...when are they going to combine them finally? I guess SJ will get a slight boost, and SF a slight loss from that)...but then they also have a list of "potential urban agglomerations" which has the SF, SJ, Concord, Antioch, Livermore, and Vallejo urban areas all included, with a populating of 5.8 million. So i guess we're going to have these new urban agglomerations that will then be broken down into component urban areas? Kind of like we have CSAs that get split down into MSAs?

[hudkina]

They absolutely need to include this:

Use of Land Use/Land Cover Data

The Census Bureau plans to use the newly available National Land Cover Database (NLCD) developed by the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium to identify business districts and commercial zones, located both on the edge and in the interior of an urban area that would not qualify as urban based on residential population measures alone. The NLCD is a consistently defined national land cover dataset [3] that would enable the Census Bureau to add further territory to the list of exempted territory and enforce its qualification criteria objectively (Figure 3). This nationwide dataset will assist the Census Bureau in identifying, and qualifying as urban, sparsely populated urban-related territory associated with a high degree of impervious surface land cover. It also will assist the Census Bureau to identify land cover types that restrict development, such as marshes, wetlands, and estuaries, which will be included as exempted territory. Without such recognition, these types of undevelopable land covers would otherwise prohibit two or more communities to connect via a jump, even though they share functional ties.

One of my biggest complaints about the deliniation of urban areas is that they base it solely on population density, and not land use. If it were up to me, it would be entirely based on land use and instead of using block groups and blocks, it would use property boundaries as the smallest building block.

[HurricaneHugo]

Originally Posted by pesto

This is probably the result of their being no meaningful way of splitting the Santa Barbara to SD region. SB-Ventura-Camarillo-Thousand Oaks-LA-LB-Anaheim-Irvine-Mission Viejo-San Clemente-Oceanside-Escondido-Encinitas-Del Mar-SD is a string of 100k plus cities (mixed with about 200 other cities) with their own employment bases and residential areas but shared cultural amenities and easy movement between nodes. Include Tijuana and coastal Mexico to get a full understanding.

SM-LA-Pasadena-SGV-Pomona-Ontario-Fontana-SB-Riverside is a similar east-west string. Any divisions are artificial.

Well there's a gigantic military base between Mission Viejo/San Clemente and the rest of the San Diego Urban Area...

[SDfan]

Originally Posted by HurricaneHugo

Well there's a gigantic military base between Mission Viejo/San Clemente and the rest of the San Diego Urban Area...

That is weird. I mean Temecula and southwestern Riverside County I get, but Mission Viejo... a bit off.

[unusualfire]

The proposed changes are now on the census site.

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/diff2000p2010.html

[dimondpark]

This has zero bearing on actual Metropolitan Area boundaries. Apples and Oranges.

Well, at least for now anyway--the OMB is very tempermental.

[LMich]

This thread wasn't about metropolitan areas, so what bearing does that have on anything?

[Chase Unperson]

It is interesting that NY's urbanized population is twice that of LA's which is twice that of Chicago's, but the pattern quickly falls apart after that.

[HeyHey]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It's pretty interesting that the Detroit urban area has nearly sprawled north to Port Huron, but Monroe County is largely un-urbanized. I wonder what's the reason?

What's really interesting is that Toledo hardly has any suburbs north of the city, but it has suburbs that push south by 15 miles from downtown. Toledo literally is urban all the way up until the state line and it suddenly becomes farmland in Monroe County. On the other hand, Detroit's suburbs primarily went west and north and by the time you get to Monroe County it is essentially farmland again.

If Toledo and Detroit had suburbs that had gone in opposite directions from what they actually did then the two metros would essentially be indistinguishable.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by LMich

This thread wasn't about metropolitan areas, so what bearing does that have on anything?

It needs to be pointed out lest someone thinks that this is about Metropolitan Areas and metro area boundary requirements are a bit more stringent and not based on land development.

[lawfin]

Originally Posted by Chase Unperson

It is interesting that NY's urbanized population is twice that of LA's which is twice that of Chicago's, but the pattern quickly falls apart after that.

That is not even remotely true at least according to 2000 numbers. We don't have 2010 UA yet so even assuming you are basing your incorrect assessment on that it would be based on data that you simply are not in possession of yet. Your posts are almost pathologically inaccurate.

For the record 2000 UA NYC approx 17.8 million, LA approx 11.8 million, Chi approx 8.3 million, Phi apprix 5.1 million were the most populous in 2000.

It will be interesting to see how the new UA definition impacts these numbers; despite the phantasmagoric ruminations of certain 'creative' posters

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

This has zero bearing on actual Metropolitan Area boundaries. Apples and Oranges.

Well, at least for now anyway--the OMB is very tempermental.

On the contrary. It has a LOT to do with metropolitan area boundaries. For example, if the rules are changed to include more non-residential areas, then Riverside-San Bernardino instantly becomes a part of the Los Angeles UA, and Riverside and San Bernardino counties are included with the Los Angeles MSA. The same would be true of Bridgeport and New Haven. Their urban areas would be lumped in with the New York UA, and therefore those two counties will become apart of the New York MSA. Cleveland and Akron would probably merge. Detroit and Ann Arbor would probably merge. Lots of cities would merge.