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Originally Posted by dc_denizen
If you add Hudson, Essex, union, and southern Bergen counties, this is an urban area of about what, 2 million people. This is a contiguous part of NY, same as Lambeth is a part of London. Add the inner urban area of west Chester and Nassau and New York is a city of around 11 million.
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I don’t believe that there are people disputing that the New Jersey and other counties you refer to are part of New York’s urban or metro area (to throw a cat amongst the pigeons they wouldn’t be classified as such if using the UK’s Office for National Statistics definitions), but they aren’t part of New York City in the same fashion that the London Borough of Lambeth is with London on a whole range of political, economic and social measures.
Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
Now you're bringing in a different factor altogether: connectivity. Connectivity is definitely key but your argument was about distinctness which has no bearing whatsoever. Has it not occurred to you that 2 distinct cities can merge into one metro? It happens all the time. Hamilton and Toronto have existed separately but I'm not sure one can say that anymore. GO Transit is changing everything.
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Urban areas can be connected, whilst incongruent, and vice-versa.
You raise GO Transit as being a facilitator towards a merger, but GO Transit is an infrequent and slow commuter train network that lacks consistent all-day bi-directional across its network. The Regional Express Rail project will undoubtedly go some way to rectifying this issue, but even then, the likes of Hamilton GO Centre will only be guaranteed a single 1tph throughout the day (with increased frequencies at rush-hour).
A few years back I worked out the number of commuter trains that arrived in the central core (between 08:00 - 08:59 on a typical weekday) for a variety of cities; London and Toronto are illustrated below. As you can see, there is far greater connectivity across a far wider area beyond London than compared to Toronto, but it would be erroneous to claim that everything in view (and beyond) is part of a London metro area.