Some of these metros are not geographically accurate. Atlanta is missing almost 1/4 its metro counties including Cobb which is considered a core metro county
Also… there was no census in 2023… also the numbers are wrong… also the regions are way off… this is MapPorn only in the sense that it is a map with made up only to resemble reality, not reflect it.
I live north of Spokane and to say that the metro area goes up to the Canadian border is straight out ridiculous. A lot of that is nothing but wilderness.
Yeah I get that, but metro areas are determined by county so out west where counties are massive, you find a bunch of head scratchers like that. I live in the Denver area and Arapahoe and Adams counties are part of the core metro. But if you go out to the eastern side of those counties, there’s no difference between there and the heart of Kansas lol.
Spokane and Stevens Counties both go all the way up to Canada, and like the other guy said, metro areas are by county
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane_metropolitan_area
Marietta (Cobb county and more) recently became its own MSA, which is why they don't show up here
Wikipedia has a pretty good breakdown
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Atlanta
Absolutely and if they want to make that division its own MSA it has over 1.3 million people with Cobb having over 770,000 just by itself. You add Cherokee county and it’s over 1 million.
Syracuse and Albany aren’t midwestern. I’d even say that Rochester isn’t. BUT you could make a case for Buffalo.
It’s on Lake Erie , not even the farthest east of the Great Lakes and it’s only 120 miles from Buffalo to Ohio.
Ignoring the whole 'Western NY is different from upstate which is different from the finger lakes region" debate for two seconds, I would argue buffalo is more Midwest than it is east coast. Rochester however is more east coast than it is Midwest, and is also home to the linguistic dividing line between soda and pop, so Rochester could be considered great lakes but not Midwest. At the maximum you could argue it's the border, but buffalo has much more Midwest cultural aspects (Sports, drinking culture, car culture, social groups etc.) than Rochester.
Syracuse however is just a mall, and the fallout pit that they call Onondaga lake, the perfect example of a rust belt city but distinctly upstate/northeastern.
I think of it as, Buffalo 70% Midwest 30% northeast Rochester is a solid 30 Midwest 70 northeast and Syracuse is 100% northeast/upstate.
But hey, at least none of them are Utica right?
Kidding aside, Buffalo has the drinking culture and work culture of a Midwest city, after living there for a couple years it was a culture shock and I'm from Rochester. Syracuse is distinctly northeastern but I'd argue should be defined by the rust belt term as it really hasn't recovered. Buffalo and Rochester I think have somewhat recovered in their own ways, and with many problems (Buffalo's 'Bills' based economy compared to Rochester's pivot to optics and higher end manufacturing) But all these cities still have issues (Food deserts, childhood poverty, job growth, infrastructure investment etc. are all lagging behind. Buffalo is lucky it has a lot of housing stock which Rochester lacks by comparison.
Either way, Rochester is a 30s to 40s persons town, Buffalo is a 20s to 30s town, and Syracuse is a blend of both.
Thank you! I knew I wasn’t going crazy.
The culture in Buffalo feels much closer to midwestern than it does east coast or New England.
It definitely falls on a spectrum. It isn’t firmly one way or another.
To say it’s 70% midwestern is fair.
u/justthekoufax I think it’s pretty hard to argue against the comment above.
Get my username out your mouth. Seriously though really thoughtful comment that does not change the fact the geographically speaking Buffalo is not in the Midwest.
This is really well put, and as someone from Syracuse who lived in Buffalo for eight years I agree with everything you said. I’ve always felt Buffalo was the beginning of the Midwest
I was like, "what the hell is this bullshit" until I got to "and I'm from Rochester." Ahaha, ok buddy, I get it: more Rochester hating on Buffalo. But hey, you wrote your little essay and sound erudite so you fooled everyone else. Can't fool me. This is just more Rochester inferiority complex, always having to justify how you're better than Buffalo. Meanwhile, Buffalo is just like, Yeah Rochester is pretty cool I guess.
I did.
Buffalo feels like any other medium sized town in the rust belt portions of the Midwest.
It’s on Lake Erie NOT EVEN the most eastern of the Great Lakes. And it’s only 120 miles from Buffalo to Ohio.
It is the gateway to the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Canada.
The rust belt doesn't define the Midwest. A lot of the Midwest isn't rust belt. A large chunk of the rust belt is northeastern. I grew up in Utica, NY which is both eastern and rust belt. I live in Minneapolis which is Midwestern and emphatically not rust belt.
Buffalo isn't part of the Midwest. A lot of online geography nerds who aren't super familiar with upstate NY or Pittsburgh try to put them in the Midwest but they aren't. Just no. The interior Northeast is a thing.
Kentucky is also not the Midwest, it is part of the south.
Sorry but Buffalo quite definitely falls into the Great Lakes region.
It’s certainly not New England, not part of Appalachia or the Adirondacks or any other mountain ranges in the northeast.
Its weather is completely dictated by the Great Lakes. Buffalo gets more lake effect snow than any other major city on the Great Lakes.
Its identity and industry is all dominated by the Great Lakes.
That’s why I said you can make a case that it’s midwestern.
The Great Lakes and the Midwest aren't synonyms. There are more major Midwestern cities off the Great Lakes than on. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee are Great Lakes cities, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St Louis, Kansas City and Minneapolis are not.
Old industry isn't just a Midwestern thing. It was all over the Northeast too. Growing up in the 80s I used to take Amtrak from Utica to NYC along the Mohawk and then the Hudson. It was a six hour tour of abandoned bombed out factories the whole way. Industrial decline is as much an upstate NY and Pennsylvania thing as a Midwestern thing. The traits that you are using to label Buffalo as Midwestern are universal upstate NY and interior Northeast traits.
I never said they were synonymous.
I said that the Great Lakes region falls within the Midwest.
Which is why you could make a case that Buffalo is Midwest.
Also, your point about number of cities on the Great Lakes vs off is kind of arbitrary. The cities on the Great Lakes (you forgot Buffalo and Toronto) have larger populations overall than the ones you listed not on the Great Lakes.
Chicago (9.2 million), Detroit (4.3 million), Cleveland (2.1 million), Cleveland (2.1 million), Milwaukee (1.5 million), Buffalo (1.1 million), Toronto (6 million).
The metro areas you listed not on the Great Lakes:
Columbus (2.1 million), Cincinnati (2.2 million), Indianapolis (2.1 million), St Louis (2.7 million), Kansas City (2.2 million), Minneapolis (3.7 million).
The industry around the Great Lakes has generally drawn more people than farming communities have.
Is it not the second most easterly Great Lake? If we’re gonna make the all caps distinction, let’s not pretend it’s not on the most eastern point of the second most eastern Great Lake.
It feels like your point is mostly vibes over geography.
As a Buffalonian, I find myself terribly offended by this. We’re Northeast.
Measuring by mileage would make a lot of cities in different regions. The line needs to be somewhere, and it definitely doesn’t end with Buffalo.
Well I’m sorry but Buffalo doesn’t feel or look any different to me than a place like Cleveland does.
Buffalo doesn’t even have a New York accent. It has a Great Lakes/Inland North/midwestern accent.
You’re closer to Lake Erie than I am in Detroit.
Is Lake Erie the definitive “Midwest” indicator? I genuinely don’t know.
I’ve been many places in New York (as most people do in the state they live in) and none of them really look any different than Buffalo nor have a “New York” accent, either.
Regions feel arbitrary but I don’t find Buffalo to be Midwest. Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany are relatively similar to me. I don’t consider any of them to be Midwest.
Pensacola is the smallest-feeling 500k+ metro I’ve ever been in. It’s very low density and the anchor city (Pensacola, obviously) is only around 50-60k. Aside from downtown (which is small but nice) and a few surrounding older neighborhoods, it’s a loose collection of low-density subdivisions and strip malls dropped in among the pine trees.
It feels more like a metro around 150-250k to me.
Briefly lived on Mobile Bay (Fairhope, AL) and the Pensacola airport was actually more convenient to get to than Mobile. Based on my experience with that I would never have dreamed the Pensacola metro was that big.
Such a dinky little airport (essentially a shuttle to Atlanta) that you drive “through the city” to get to and it barely takes 10 minutes.
It’s pretty spread out, tbh. The city itself only has a population of like 60k. There’s a bunch of surrounding midsized cities that make up the bulk of the population.
The eastern shore of Mobile is a separate metro. It's one of those metros where the CSA (665,147) feels more accurate than the metro (especially since the CSA is only two counties. Granted, those are the two physically largest in the state).
It bugs me to no end that the Census decided to split Mobile’s metro to those two counties. By the 2020 Census, more than 25% of Baldwinities commute to Mobile for work, which satisfies the definition of including a county in a city’s metro area. We thought this meant Baldwin would be lumped back into Mobile’s metro. Maybe 2030 Census.
The CSA that includes Fairhope does, but not the MSA which is split by the Bay. Both the MS and AL panhandles are on the cusp of reaching 500k (although MS is pretty slow growing).
It should probably be part of the Philadelphia area. It's anchored by Trenton to the SW and Princeton to the NE, but the bulk of the population is in Trenton and the surrounding townships.
If counties could be split between MSAs, then Mercer would be a prototypical example with the Trenton portion going to Philadelphia and the Princeton portion going to NYC.
Mercer County is technically its own metro area based around Trenton. However, when you do combined statistical areas, Trenton tends to fall in the NYC area.
I could see the Cascades route between Eugene and Vancouver, BC get electrified someday but the Cascades and low population density outside of Spokane makes the cost quite high from Seattle to Spokane.
Yeah, being in CNY and I was like who thinks Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are remotely Midwest?? Pittsburgh is at least close ish to Ohio but come oooon 😆
From Cleveland, and Pittsburgh and Buffalo feel a lot more like Cleveland to me than they do any east coast cities. Though I've also had people from other parts of the Midwest tell me they think Cleveland feels like an east coast city more than a Midwest city so idk
Wytheville is definitely Appalachia.
Nova is more aligned with the northeast(Philly/nyc/Boston) than it is with Raleigh.
Richmond is the south(granted I haven't been there for 20 years but lived there in the 90s)
As someone who lives in #37, historically for sure it is absolutely not in the northeast. But it’s culturally moving more and more northern. All of this is anecdotal but people are constantly coming in from New York down here and the military bases here have absolutely muddled down the traditional southern culture. Yeah there’s people that say yall and drink sweet tea, but we’re way more interconnected to the Northeast now than the South especially as directly south of the 757 Area as it’s called is marshland and the outer banks with no close connection to big Southeast cities.
I would have sworn that the Springfield, MA metro area had 500k people even decades ago when I lived there, so I looked it up, and it says it was 699k in 2020. What's the deal?
In the case of Cleveland and Akron I'm pretty sure they have recently been merging them together. I have seen both Cleveland- Elyria Metropolitan area and I have also seen Cleveland-Akron-Canton Metropolitan area. So I think in this case it heavily depends on the source you receive your info from.
Harrisburg has one of the most skewed city proper to MSA population ratios.
Also, within the last few years Lower Paxton Township
surpassed Harrisburg as the most populous municipality (54k in LPT vs. 49k in HBG city proper).
So, is it technically the Lower Paxton Township metro area now? Lol.
Being from the U.K., when I see a map like this I realise how over-populated we are. To think there’s only that many places with 500,000 people or more, when in the U.K. we have 8 cities over 500,000 and 41 out of the 47 English counties have atleast 500,000 living in them (21 have over 1,000,000) in a country that fits inside of Texas.
That's the CSA, this is the MSA. I'd argue the former makes sense from an economic standpoint, the latter from a cultural one. In the sense that someone in Oakland might go over the bridge for dinner but won't regularly go to San Jose.
SF, Oakland and San Jose all identify as being in the Bay Area. They share public transit (such as "Bay Area" Rapid Transit), they all border the bay, share sports teams, TV stations, radio stations, etc. It doesn't take that long to go from Oakland to SJ lol.
But the census defines metro areas with a one-size fits all formula based on commuter patterns, and unlike most cities, the geography of the Bay Area forced it to form in a polycentric way, that gets split-up by the census in way that doesn't reflect the reality on the ground (the LA area also suffers from this). A quick way to help illustrate how dumb this is: Palo Alto (SJ MSA) and East Palo Alto and Menlo Park (SF MSA) are allegedly in separate metro areas, according to the census. Look at them on google maps, and try to figure out how that makes sense lol. For this reason, the SJ-SF-Oakland CSA stats are more accurate if you're trying to measure the Bay Area. Though ever since the census added places like Stockton (definitely not the Bay Area), the CSA numbers have been inflated. But at least the CSA measurement doesn't chop the Bay Area into 5 separate metro areas, unlike with MSAs.
Pittsburgh and Upstate New York are definitely not Midwest. Kentucky really shouldn’t be included there either. If you’re making a category for “Plains” then the northern plains metros should be listed there instead of Midwest also (KC, Omaha)
Respect for the time to make the map. This is a strange discussion because there are finite definitions for Metro areas that don't all mean the same things. People view Metro as a local construct. Metropolitan Statistical Areas are both defined and declared by the US Census bureau. As of 2020: this is the map: https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/metroarea/us\_wall/Mar2020/CBSA\_WallMap\_Mar2020.pdf. Light green counties with thick borders, micropolitan statistical areas--basically rural areas with a center for commerce and employment. Metropolitan areas are the dark green areas with the thick lines--which may have one or more dotted lines inside.
There are also Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs) which wrap all the adjacent metropolitan areas that share regional commerce and labor pools into larger metroplexes. Here is that map: https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/metroarea/us\_wall/Mar2020/CSA\_WallMap\_Mar2020.pdf. Dark green boxes with thin green lines depict MSAs inside the CSA. light green counties are the micropolitan areas inside of CSAs.
When the typical person thinks of metro, it typically falls into some variation between these two maps, but the personal vision rarely lines up with either. It doesn't help that news organizations misuse the term during weather segments, businesses and commerce organizations use the term to mean different things for marketing, Nielsen DMAs don't match either MSA or CSA, and regularly, the CSA (and MSA) don't match the personal view of many. People in Kenosha County, WI are almost as likely to see themselves as part of a metro with Racine, or as part of Milwaukee Metro as they are to see being a part of "Chicagoland" (which itself is used synonymously for metro, and also has no fixed meaning.) LOTS of people in New Jersey take serious protest to being split between two metro or combined-metro areas because it dilutes New Jersey's identity and local culture.
Some have already pointed out that counties are a crappy use for metro areas. I agree, but the reason the US Census bureau rolls with it is because when they use it, they're measuring economic things primarily--population (for the workforce), economic output, labor pool, wages, etc., etc. When we as people use it, we're trying to align people under a culture.
EDIT: I looked at the populations on the map. They appear to be for CSAs, not the MSAs that are shown.
Akron and Cleveland are absolutely interconnected. The infrastructure, political, and economic ties are the same as a core city with its suburbs. Same applies to Cleveland and Lorain/Elyria. All together, the Cleveland region is north of 3 million.
I honestly think there needs to be a Great Lake or Appalachia region or something. Having Pittsburgh in the same region as Omaha and Minneapolis is crazy to me. We’re a 4-hour drive from DC. That’s closer than Jacksonville is to Miami.
I've heard that St. Louis is the gateway to the west. I think pittsburgh is the gateway to the Midwest. Both northeastern and Midwestern elements in the area.
Sure but climate, geographically, and topology wise it doesn't really feel like Indiana. I suppose the same could be said regarding northern Michigan. Idk why people are down voting it's just funny.
I have learned from Reddit that Midwest is a funny term (as a person who is identifies as a Midwesterner). I guess because even people living in it have vastly different definitions of what Midwest means and how to get to those definitions. I think Great Lakes region and Great Plains definitely helps as a way to break it down. Great Lakes region seems to view the term Midwest from a cultural lens while Great Plains tends to view from a
>climate, geographically, and topology
(and economic) lens. I think the problem is that for the Midwest it's half and half. Compared to the South which is pretty much solely viewed in a cultural lens (Kentucky foothills, Louisiana Bayou, and coastal Florida all have very different climate, geography, and topology but when people talk about places in the South not being "Southern" it's pretty much only based on culture (like New Orleans or the cliche, in Florida the farther north you go, the more Southern it gets).
I’ve never been to Pittsburgh so I can’t really speak to it, but as someone who’s lived in the Philly area his whole life, if anyone calls Pennsylvania as a whole a midwestern state (and I’ve seen it on this godforsaken app) they deserve to get hit by a bus.
On #95.
Perry County, PA is like 1/6 the population of Dauphin and Cumberland counties. Definitely not part of the Harrisburg “metro” area as it’s all mountains and woods. Northern York county is more apt imo since it’s commuting distance to Harrisburg.
Metro Areas are defined by commuting patterns. The last time I looked at the data something like 60-70% of Perry County’s workforce commutes into Dauphin or Cumberland counties. The threshold for being included is only
25%. So Perry County overwhelmingly meets the criteria for being included.
That being said Perry County is very rural and does not seem like it would be part of an urban metro area.
I mean, there are plenty of super rural counties in Georgia orbiting far from Atlanta that operate the same way. Atlanta is a far far larger city than Harrisburg but this is just a analogy/comparison
Northern York County does lean heavily toward Harrisburg but it is not enough to tilt the entirety of York county to Harrisburg’s custody. York and Harrisburg are very distinct and separate entities overall, not enough overlap and too far of distance to combine them.
And even Carlisle presents its own host of issues being combined with Harrisburg too. Though there, most of Cumberland Counties population does lean toward Harrisburg. It just means that the western part of Carlisle, Plainfield, Shippensburg are added on into Harrisburg’s metro area because they fall within the borders of the county. Metro areas are all or nothing when it comes to county borders.
Metro areas in states that uses the township system should just be divided by municipalities instead. I’d put Maryville and the two townships west of it as a part of the Harrisburg metro and consider the rest of the county rural. Similarly, northern York County should also be considered Harrisburg metro while the eastern part (Wrightsville) Lancaster metro
Metro area names on this map are sometimes inconsistent/arbitrary. For example, the map says "Albany/Troy" when Schenectady is in the full Metro area name and it's larger than Troy. And Kiryas Joel is actually the largest principal city in Poughkeepsie's metro area.
Memphis definition looks very generous. Certainly wouldn't include Benton and Coahoma counties in MS and St. Francis County in AR. Tunica, Tate, and Marshall in MS are pretty rural too but I can see including due to proximity.
New Mexican here. It's interesting to see Sandoval and Torrance Counties included in the Albuquerque metro, while Santa Fe County isn't. I suppose you can make the case as part of Rio Rancho is in Sandoval and Valencia County towns (Belen, Los Lunas, etc.) depend economically on Albuquerque.
Salem, Albany, Corvallis and Eugene are touching county wise and that is probably close to a million, and way over 500k.
I mean they are spread out a bit, but so are a lot if the Portland metro that's listed.
Bet in a few year those two pink areas will shrink a lot. Between the absolutely regressive insanity out of the Louisiana government, and the next impending major hurricane, and many other little factors, people will peace tf out
When did Kentucky end up in the Midwest? Did anyone tell them? Did UK and UofL join the B1G? Did they take grits off all the breakfast menus? Did they stop serving mint juleps at the Derby? Do they say “you guys” instead of y’all now?
Los Angles. Spanish for "The Angles."
Sacremento. Sacre is French for sacred. Mento is the singular form of Mentos, which is a brand of mint. Sacremento = Sacred Mint.
This is way funnier than mine! LOL!
And San Diego - German for “a whale’s vagina”
Agree to disagree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_pMYJdzFAo
You cut off the part where Ron responds with “Agree to Disagree!” 🤦🏻♂️ . . . CANNONBALL
Oh, duh! Haven’t seen it in a long time.
There were about five years of my life where I think we only communicated in quotes from Anchorman, Superbad… amongst others.
Smells like Bigfoot’s dick!
The *sacra-* in Sacramento does indeed mean “sacred.” https://www.etymonline.com/word/sacrament
Mephis. What italian plumbers exclaim if catching seafood. “Me phis!”
That's acute way of looking at it.
Some of these metros are not geographically accurate. Atlanta is missing almost 1/4 its metro counties including Cobb which is considered a core metro county
Also in California #62 is not labeled and should be Bakersfield I would presume!
Also… there was no census in 2023… also the numbers are wrong… also the regions are way off… this is MapPorn only in the sense that it is a map with made up only to resemble reality, not reflect it.
It’s kind of a fucked map, so would that make it perfect MapPorn?
Meanwhile they added at least 3 counties to the Columbus Ohio metro that are practically just cornfields lmao
Came here to say this
I live north of Spokane and to say that the metro area goes up to the Canadian border is straight out ridiculous. A lot of that is nothing but wilderness.
Yeah I get that, but metro areas are determined by county so out west where counties are massive, you find a bunch of head scratchers like that. I live in the Denver area and Arapahoe and Adams counties are part of the core metro. But if you go out to the eastern side of those counties, there’s no difference between there and the heart of Kansas lol.
Spokane and Stevens Counties both go all the way up to Canada, and like the other guy said, metro areas are by county https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane_metropolitan_area
I would also say cda is more apart of the metro then north Spokane.
You spelled Alana wrong
Marietta (Cobb county and more) recently became its own MSA, which is why they don't show up here Wikipedia has a pretty good breakdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Atlanta
This is not correct. Marrietta is a division, but it remains part of Atlanta MSA.
Absolutely and if they want to make that division its own MSA it has over 1.3 million people with Cobb having over 770,000 just by itself. You add Cherokee county and it’s over 1 million.
New Yorkers may not agree on what is considered “upstate” but they sure as fuck all agree that none of it is “Midwest”
Syracuse and Buffalo in the “Midwest” put me in a coma
Syracuse and Albany aren’t midwestern. I’d even say that Rochester isn’t. BUT you could make a case for Buffalo. It’s on Lake Erie , not even the farthest east of the Great Lakes and it’s only 120 miles from Buffalo to Ohio.
Ignoring the whole 'Western NY is different from upstate which is different from the finger lakes region" debate for two seconds, I would argue buffalo is more Midwest than it is east coast. Rochester however is more east coast than it is Midwest, and is also home to the linguistic dividing line between soda and pop, so Rochester could be considered great lakes but not Midwest. At the maximum you could argue it's the border, but buffalo has much more Midwest cultural aspects (Sports, drinking culture, car culture, social groups etc.) than Rochester. Syracuse however is just a mall, and the fallout pit that they call Onondaga lake, the perfect example of a rust belt city but distinctly upstate/northeastern. I think of it as, Buffalo 70% Midwest 30% northeast Rochester is a solid 30 Midwest 70 northeast and Syracuse is 100% northeast/upstate. But hey, at least none of them are Utica right? Kidding aside, Buffalo has the drinking culture and work culture of a Midwest city, after living there for a couple years it was a culture shock and I'm from Rochester. Syracuse is distinctly northeastern but I'd argue should be defined by the rust belt term as it really hasn't recovered. Buffalo and Rochester I think have somewhat recovered in their own ways, and with many problems (Buffalo's 'Bills' based economy compared to Rochester's pivot to optics and higher end manufacturing) But all these cities still have issues (Food deserts, childhood poverty, job growth, infrastructure investment etc. are all lagging behind. Buffalo is lucky it has a lot of housing stock which Rochester lacks by comparison. Either way, Rochester is a 30s to 40s persons town, Buffalo is a 20s to 30s town, and Syracuse is a blend of both.
Thank you! I knew I wasn’t going crazy. The culture in Buffalo feels much closer to midwestern than it does east coast or New England. It definitely falls on a spectrum. It isn’t firmly one way or another. To say it’s 70% midwestern is fair. u/justthekoufax I think it’s pretty hard to argue against the comment above.
Get my username out your mouth. Seriously though really thoughtful comment that does not change the fact the geographically speaking Buffalo is not in the Midwest.
Buffalo is the gateway to the Great Lakes, Canada, and Midwest via the Erie canal historically and geographically.
This is really well put, and as someone from Syracuse who lived in Buffalo for eight years I agree with everything you said. I’ve always felt Buffalo was the beginning of the Midwest
It's a lovely city, it has its problems, though a large portion of them are self inflicted.
I was like, "what the hell is this bullshit" until I got to "and I'm from Rochester." Ahaha, ok buddy, I get it: more Rochester hating on Buffalo. But hey, you wrote your little essay and sound erudite so you fooled everyone else. Can't fool me. This is just more Rochester inferiority complex, always having to justify how you're better than Buffalo. Meanwhile, Buffalo is just like, Yeah Rochester is pretty cool I guess.
Please make the case then cause I’ve lived in Buffalo and it ain’t Midwest.
I did. Buffalo feels like any other medium sized town in the rust belt portions of the Midwest. It’s on Lake Erie NOT EVEN the most eastern of the Great Lakes. And it’s only 120 miles from Buffalo to Ohio. It is the gateway to the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Canada.
The rust belt doesn't define the Midwest. A lot of the Midwest isn't rust belt. A large chunk of the rust belt is northeastern. I grew up in Utica, NY which is both eastern and rust belt. I live in Minneapolis which is Midwestern and emphatically not rust belt. Buffalo isn't part of the Midwest. A lot of online geography nerds who aren't super familiar with upstate NY or Pittsburgh try to put them in the Midwest but they aren't. Just no. The interior Northeast is a thing. Kentucky is also not the Midwest, it is part of the south.
Sorry but Buffalo quite definitely falls into the Great Lakes region. It’s certainly not New England, not part of Appalachia or the Adirondacks or any other mountain ranges in the northeast. Its weather is completely dictated by the Great Lakes. Buffalo gets more lake effect snow than any other major city on the Great Lakes. Its identity and industry is all dominated by the Great Lakes. That’s why I said you can make a case that it’s midwestern.
The Great Lakes and the Midwest aren't synonyms. There are more major Midwestern cities off the Great Lakes than on. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee are Great Lakes cities, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St Louis, Kansas City and Minneapolis are not. Old industry isn't just a Midwestern thing. It was all over the Northeast too. Growing up in the 80s I used to take Amtrak from Utica to NYC along the Mohawk and then the Hudson. It was a six hour tour of abandoned bombed out factories the whole way. Industrial decline is as much an upstate NY and Pennsylvania thing as a Midwestern thing. The traits that you are using to label Buffalo as Midwestern are universal upstate NY and interior Northeast traits.
I never said they were synonymous. I said that the Great Lakes region falls within the Midwest. Which is why you could make a case that Buffalo is Midwest. Also, your point about number of cities on the Great Lakes vs off is kind of arbitrary. The cities on the Great Lakes (you forgot Buffalo and Toronto) have larger populations overall than the ones you listed not on the Great Lakes. Chicago (9.2 million), Detroit (4.3 million), Cleveland (2.1 million), Cleveland (2.1 million), Milwaukee (1.5 million), Buffalo (1.1 million), Toronto (6 million). The metro areas you listed not on the Great Lakes: Columbus (2.1 million), Cincinnati (2.2 million), Indianapolis (2.1 million), St Louis (2.7 million), Kansas City (2.2 million), Minneapolis (3.7 million). The industry around the Great Lakes has generally drawn more people than farming communities have.
Is it not the second most easterly Great Lake? If we’re gonna make the all caps distinction, let’s not pretend it’s not on the most eastern point of the second most eastern Great Lake. It feels like your point is mostly vibes over geography.
As a Buffalonian, I find myself terribly offended by this. We’re Northeast. Measuring by mileage would make a lot of cities in different regions. The line needs to be somewhere, and it definitely doesn’t end with Buffalo.
I’m offended that you find my midwestern-ness so offensive.
Nothing but love for the Midwest, but most people don’t want to feel mislabeled.
Well I’m sorry but Buffalo doesn’t feel or look any different to me than a place like Cleveland does. Buffalo doesn’t even have a New York accent. It has a Great Lakes/Inland North/midwestern accent. You’re closer to Lake Erie than I am in Detroit.
Is Lake Erie the definitive “Midwest” indicator? I genuinely don’t know. I’ve been many places in New York (as most people do in the state they live in) and none of them really look any different than Buffalo nor have a “New York” accent, either. Regions feel arbitrary but I don’t find Buffalo to be Midwest. Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany are relatively similar to me. I don’t consider any of them to be Midwest.
You have been forcibly annexed into Corn Country. Please do not resist.
I’d say Buffalo is rust belt, but definitely not midwest
I believe the best way of looking at this debate, geographically speaking, is that the Midwest and Great Lakes regions are akin to a Venn Diagram.
Missing #62 name and pop
Bakersfield is pretty forgettable 😂
>Bakersfield is pretty forgettable 😂 If Bakersfield residents could read, they would be very upset.
We can read. We cant breathe.
Preach
This is a great map. And it’s three days ride from Bakersfield, and I don’t know why I came. I guess I came to keep from paying dues.
I didn’t realize the Pensacola area had more people than Mobile!
Pensacola is the smallest-feeling 500k+ metro I’ve ever been in. It’s very low density and the anchor city (Pensacola, obviously) is only around 50-60k. Aside from downtown (which is small but nice) and a few surrounding older neighborhoods, it’s a loose collection of low-density subdivisions and strip malls dropped in among the pine trees. It feels more like a metro around 150-250k to me.
Right! I thought it was like 100k
Briefly lived on Mobile Bay (Fairhope, AL) and the Pensacola airport was actually more convenient to get to than Mobile. Based on my experience with that I would never have dreamed the Pensacola metro was that big. Such a dinky little airport (essentially a shuttle to Atlanta) that you drive “through the city” to get to and it barely takes 10 minutes.
It’s pretty spread out, tbh. The city itself only has a population of like 60k. There’s a bunch of surrounding midsized cities that make up the bulk of the population.
That's a lot of the US. I've been to Jacksonville a few times and it doesn't ever feel like there are almost two million people there.
True, but I do think it’s especially noticeable in Pensacola. 60k as an anchor for 500k is pretty wild
Probably because the Mobile metro definition doesn’t include Baldwin County
The eastern shore of Mobile is a separate metro. It's one of those metros where the CSA (665,147) feels more accurate than the metro (especially since the CSA is only two counties. Granted, those are the two physically largest in the state).
It bugs me to no end that the Census decided to split Mobile’s metro to those two counties. By the 2020 Census, more than 25% of Baldwinities commute to Mobile for work, which satisfies the definition of including a county in a city’s metro area. We thought this meant Baldwin would be lumped back into Mobile’s metro. Maybe 2030 Census.
Metro mobile has more than 500k people, it should be on there.
The CSA that includes Fairhope does, but not the MSA which is split by the Bay. Both the MS and AL panhandles are on the cusp of reaching 500k (although MS is pretty slow growing).
Says 411,000 on Google
Get fucked Mercer County, NJ
It should probably be part of the Philadelphia area. It's anchored by Trenton to the SW and Princeton to the NE, but the bulk of the population is in Trenton and the surrounding townships. If counties could be split between MSAs, then Mercer would be a prototypical example with the Trenton portion going to Philadelphia and the Princeton portion going to NYC.
Legally speaking, Trenton’s metro area (which is just Mercer county) is apart of the greater NYC combined statistical area.
Too smol
The county alone has 400k people, I think it’s more the algorithm doesn’t know whether to put it in the NY metro or Philly metro
Mercer County is technically its own metro area based around Trenton. However, when you do combined statistical areas, Trenton tends to fall in the NYC area.
My favorite metris are Augsuta, Mephis, Los Angles, and Baton Rogue
Don’t foget Raliegh!
And “Sacremento”
Witchita?
r/tragedeigh
How is Cobb County not a part of Metro ATL?
Ah yes, Sacremento, with the surrounding counties of Plaser, Yoyo, Suffer, and Tuba. Proud to call that area home.
Good one. I came here to comment on the spelling error, but you handled it.
Why is there no railway with at least speeds of \~200 Km/h between Seattle, Portland and Spokane?
I could see the Cascades route between Eugene and Vancouver, BC get electrified someday but the Cascades and low population density outside of Spokane makes the cost quite high from Seattle to Spokane.
Pittsburgh, upstate NY, etc are not the Midwest.
Yeah, being in CNY and I was like who thinks Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are remotely Midwest?? Pittsburgh is at least close ish to Ohio but come oooon 😆
From Cleveland, and Pittsburgh and Buffalo feel a lot more like Cleveland to me than they do any east coast cities. Though I've also had people from other parts of the Midwest tell me they think Cleveland feels like an east coast city more than a Midwest city so idk
Kind of like saying Mongolia is part of Europe.
Mephis
Mephis
Temple
Temple
~~Tempe~~ ~~Tampa~~ Temple
Virginia is not the northeast
Southerner who recently moved to Virginia, it’s also hard to call it the Southeast either. It’s the midatlantic and isn’t southern or northern.
definitely depends where ur at in VA
Yep. Richmond is the line--north of Richmond is "the north". Richmond and south is "the south".
Wytheville is definitely Appalachia. Nova is more aligned with the northeast(Philly/nyc/Boston) than it is with Raleigh. Richmond is the south(granted I haven't been there for 20 years but lived there in the 90s)
As someone who lives in #37, historically for sure it is absolutely not in the northeast. But it’s culturally moving more and more northern. All of this is anecdotal but people are constantly coming in from New York down here and the military bases here have absolutely muddled down the traditional southern culture. Yeah there’s people that say yall and drink sweet tea, but we’re way more interconnected to the Northeast now than the South especially as directly south of the 757 Area as it’s called is marshland and the outer banks with no close connection to big Southeast cities.
Virginia Beacher can confirm, although I like to think we're still more southern than NoVA.
Came here to say this. Either southeast or "Mid-Atlantic"
I would have sworn that the Springfield, MA metro area had 500k people even decades ago when I lived there, so I looked it up, and it says it was 699k in 2020. What's the deal?
Everyone’s arguing over whether their region is the Midwest or not and nobody noticed that you didn’t put El Paso in the Texas category
“Texas” seems to mean the Texas Triangle.
Mephis
In the case of Cleveland and Akron I'm pretty sure they have recently been merging them together. I have seen both Cleveland- Elyria Metropolitan area and I have also seen Cleveland-Akron-Canton Metropolitan area. So I think in this case it heavily depends on the source you receive your info from.
VA is officially NE now. Been saying it for years.
AGSUTA. MEPHIS.
Out of the 600,000 people in Harrisburg metropolitan, only 50,000 live in the capital
Harrisburg has one of the most skewed city proper to MSA population ratios. Also, within the last few years Lower Paxton Township surpassed Harrisburg as the most populous municipality (54k in LPT vs. 49k in HBG city proper). So, is it technically the Lower Paxton Township metro area now? Lol.
It should be, considering that there are literally Micropolitan areas named after unincorporated communities and census-designated places
It's silly that Greene county isn't apart of the Pittsburgh Metro while Fayette is
You can really see the dry line stretching through the country’s midsection from north to south
Being from the U.K., when I see a map like this I realise how over-populated we are. To think there’s only that many places with 500,000 people or more, when in the U.K. we have 8 cities over 500,000 and 41 out of the 47 English counties have atleast 500,000 living in them (21 have over 1,000,000) in a country that fits inside of Texas.
How dare you put Buffalo and Rochester in the Midwest
San Francisco and San Jose are part of a single metro area
I agree with you, but the Census Bureau does not
They are wrong.
That's the CSA, this is the MSA. I'd argue the former makes sense from an economic standpoint, the latter from a cultural one. In the sense that someone in Oakland might go over the bridge for dinner but won't regularly go to San Jose.
SF, Oakland and San Jose all identify as being in the Bay Area. They share public transit (such as "Bay Area" Rapid Transit), they all border the bay, share sports teams, TV stations, radio stations, etc. It doesn't take that long to go from Oakland to SJ lol. But the census defines metro areas with a one-size fits all formula based on commuter patterns, and unlike most cities, the geography of the Bay Area forced it to form in a polycentric way, that gets split-up by the census in way that doesn't reflect the reality on the ground (the LA area also suffers from this). A quick way to help illustrate how dumb this is: Palo Alto (SJ MSA) and East Palo Alto and Menlo Park (SF MSA) are allegedly in separate metro areas, according to the census. Look at them on google maps, and try to figure out how that makes sense lol. For this reason, the SJ-SF-Oakland CSA stats are more accurate if you're trying to measure the Bay Area. Though ever since the census added places like Stockton (definitely not the Bay Area), the CSA numbers have been inflated. But at least the CSA measurement doesn't chop the Bay Area into 5 separate metro areas, unlike with MSAs.
If people in Oakland don't regularly go to SJ and vice versa, then 880 wouldn't always be a parking lot between the two cities. Lol
San Juan, PR has over 2 million in its metro area
Pittsburgh and Upstate New York are definitely not Midwest. Kentucky really shouldn’t be included there either. If you’re making a category for “Plains” then the northern plains metros should be listed there instead of Midwest also (KC, Omaha)
I’m surprised Boise, Portland (Maine), and Spokane are in this list. Edit: accidentally said Oregon, meant Maine.
You didn’t think the Portland metro area has 500K people?
I'm guessing they're talking about Maine
Shouldn’t the Spokane metro region (for population MSA) include Coeur D’Alene?
Is 90 Topeka? I'm not seeing that #/name * Found it, it'd Wichita
Louisville metro crosses the South/Midwest boundary, but it should be including in the South if you are using Census definitions
Springfield, MA metro is missing, that’s about 700k
Now connect them all with high speed rail
Respect for the time to make the map. This is a strange discussion because there are finite definitions for Metro areas that don't all mean the same things. People view Metro as a local construct. Metropolitan Statistical Areas are both defined and declared by the US Census bureau. As of 2020: this is the map: https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/metroarea/us\_wall/Mar2020/CBSA\_WallMap\_Mar2020.pdf. Light green counties with thick borders, micropolitan statistical areas--basically rural areas with a center for commerce and employment. Metropolitan areas are the dark green areas with the thick lines--which may have one or more dotted lines inside. There are also Combined Statistical Areas (CSAs) which wrap all the adjacent metropolitan areas that share regional commerce and labor pools into larger metroplexes. Here is that map: https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/metroarea/us\_wall/Mar2020/CSA\_WallMap\_Mar2020.pdf. Dark green boxes with thin green lines depict MSAs inside the CSA. light green counties are the micropolitan areas inside of CSAs. When the typical person thinks of metro, it typically falls into some variation between these two maps, but the personal vision rarely lines up with either. It doesn't help that news organizations misuse the term during weather segments, businesses and commerce organizations use the term to mean different things for marketing, Nielsen DMAs don't match either MSA or CSA, and regularly, the CSA (and MSA) don't match the personal view of many. People in Kenosha County, WI are almost as likely to see themselves as part of a metro with Racine, or as part of Milwaukee Metro as they are to see being a part of "Chicagoland" (which itself is used synonymously for metro, and also has no fixed meaning.) LOTS of people in New Jersey take serious protest to being split between two metro or combined-metro areas because it dilutes New Jersey's identity and local culture. Some have already pointed out that counties are a crappy use for metro areas. I agree, but the reason the US Census bureau rolls with it is because when they use it, they're measuring economic things primarily--population (for the workforce), economic output, labor pool, wages, etc., etc. When we as people use it, we're trying to align people under a culture. EDIT: I looked at the populations on the map. They appear to be for CSAs, not the MSAs that are shown.
Didn’t realize how big Phoenix is.
I guess they couldn't decide whether Mercer County, NJ was part of NYC or Philly Metro so they just left them out of both.
Akron and Cleveland are absolutely interconnected. The infrastructure, political, and economic ties are the same as a core city with its suburbs. Same applies to Cleveland and Lorain/Elyria. All together, the Cleveland region is north of 3 million.
They put Pittsburgh in the Midwest. It's over 😭
I honestly think there needs to be a Great Lake or Appalachia region or something. Having Pittsburgh in the same region as Omaha and Minneapolis is crazy to me. We’re a 4-hour drive from DC. That’s closer than Jacksonville is to Miami.
I’m from Pittsburgh and went to school in the Midwest. I think Pittsburgh feels way more Midwest than east coast
I've heard that St. Louis is the gateway to the west. I think pittsburgh is the gateway to the Midwest. Both northeastern and Midwestern elements in the area.
Sure but climate, geographically, and topology wise it doesn't really feel like Indiana. I suppose the same could be said regarding northern Michigan. Idk why people are down voting it's just funny.
I have learned from Reddit that Midwest is a funny term (as a person who is identifies as a Midwesterner). I guess because even people living in it have vastly different definitions of what Midwest means and how to get to those definitions. I think Great Lakes region and Great Plains definitely helps as a way to break it down. Great Lakes region seems to view the term Midwest from a cultural lens while Great Plains tends to view from a >climate, geographically, and topology (and economic) lens. I think the problem is that for the Midwest it's half and half. Compared to the South which is pretty much solely viewed in a cultural lens (Kentucky foothills, Louisiana Bayou, and coastal Florida all have very different climate, geography, and topology but when people talk about places in the South not being "Southern" it's pretty much only based on culture (like New Orleans or the cliche, in Florida the farther north you go, the more Southern it gets).
Pittsburgh is the start of the Ohio river chain of cities that define a lot of southern midwest.
Yep and the original waters that form the Ohio come from WV and NY. Quite the identity crisis.
I’ve never been to Pittsburgh so I can’t really speak to it, but as someone who’s lived in the Philly area his whole life, if anyone calls Pennsylvania as a whole a midwestern state (and I’ve seen it on this godforsaken app) they deserve to get hit by a bus.
On #95. Perry County, PA is like 1/6 the population of Dauphin and Cumberland counties. Definitely not part of the Harrisburg “metro” area as it’s all mountains and woods. Northern York county is more apt imo since it’s commuting distance to Harrisburg.
Metro Areas are defined by commuting patterns. The last time I looked at the data something like 60-70% of Perry County’s workforce commutes into Dauphin or Cumberland counties. The threshold for being included is only 25%. So Perry County overwhelmingly meets the criteria for being included. That being said Perry County is very rural and does not seem like it would be part of an urban metro area. I mean, there are plenty of super rural counties in Georgia orbiting far from Atlanta that operate the same way. Atlanta is a far far larger city than Harrisburg but this is just a analogy/comparison Northern York County does lean heavily toward Harrisburg but it is not enough to tilt the entirety of York county to Harrisburg’s custody. York and Harrisburg are very distinct and separate entities overall, not enough overlap and too far of distance to combine them. And even Carlisle presents its own host of issues being combined with Harrisburg too. Though there, most of Cumberland Counties population does lean toward Harrisburg. It just means that the western part of Carlisle, Plainfield, Shippensburg are added on into Harrisburg’s metro area because they fall within the borders of the county. Metro areas are all or nothing when it comes to county borders.
Metro areas in states that uses the township system should just be divided by municipalities instead. I’d put Maryville and the two townships west of it as a part of the Harrisburg metro and consider the rest of the county rural. Similarly, northern York County should also be considered Harrisburg metro while the eastern part (Wrightsville) Lancaster metro
Pittsburgh isn’t the Midwest.
Something is off when both Kansas City and Pittsburg are considered 'Midwest'.
This is dope
Metro area names on this map are sometimes inconsistent/arbitrary. For example, the map says "Albany/Troy" when Schenectady is in the full Metro area name and it's larger than Troy. And Kiryas Joel is actually the largest principal city in Poughkeepsie's metro area.
Philadelphia and NYC are just suburbs of New Jersey
Why is Virginia in the northeast?
The north east megalopolis is coming. When do we say the i-95 corridor ends in Richmond?
Cleveland and Akron are the same metro (#33 and #85).
They are separate metro areas but make one large combined statistical area.
Wichita and KC, nice
Why isn’t 62 listed under California?
Is Cecil County, MD part of Philadelphia's metro rather than Baltimore's?
I mean, Rising Sun does include Route 1 into Kennett Square I guess…
Fun fact at least 90% of you are mispronouncing #104
Memphis definition looks very generous. Certainly wouldn't include Benton and Coahoma counties in MS and St. Francis County in AR. Tunica, Tate, and Marshall in MS are pretty rural too but I can see including due to proximity.
So are the metros that cover 2 states supported by both states or just the major city's state?
I love this map so much
Kind of surprised to see Haralson County as part of the Marietta metro area
Spokane county should probably include kootenai county where coeur d’alene Idaho is. Definitely considered part of Spokane’s metro.
Why do they always spell Sacramento wrong?
New Mexican here. It's interesting to see Sandoval and Torrance Counties included in the Albuquerque metro, while Santa Fe County isn't. I suppose you can make the case as part of Rio Rancho is in Sandoval and Valencia County towns (Belen, Los Lunas, etc.) depend economically on Albuquerque.
How do all three of the Rhode Island counties have 500k+ when our state as a whole does not even have 1,500,000 people?
Salem, Albany, Corvallis and Eugene are touching county wise and that is probably close to a million, and way over 500k. I mean they are spread out a bit, but so are a lot if the Portland metro that's listed.
St Louis was surprisingly high
Bet in a few year those two pink areas will shrink a lot. Between the absolutely regressive insanity out of the Louisiana government, and the next impending major hurricane, and many other little factors, people will peace tf out
#100 Scranton represent!
The geography on this is just messed up. Otherwise, a fascinating map.
What is #62 in California?
“Mephis”
Missed a third metro over 500k in Michigan
You left Vance County out for the Triangle in North Carolina.
When did Kentucky end up in the Midwest? Did anyone tell them? Did UK and UofL join the B1G? Did they take grits off all the breakfast menus? Did they stop serving mint juleps at the Derby? Do they say “you guys” instead of y’all now?
Why are Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill split up?
Wow I’m in one of those
Mephis
It needs to be Dallas/Fort Worth, Fort Worth alone is the 12th largest city in the country by population alone.
Why is Stevens County in Washington state highlighted? That’s small townsville there.
Wichita, not Witchita
How dare you include Orange County in Riverside
That’s a jacked up Indy Metro area.
Good ol Mephis! Home of Elis & the Bues.
The northeast will become a true megapolis one day. Especially once we achieve 1 hour travel time between nyc and dc
It is generous to say anything north of the 96 number is metro lol
62. Bakersfield is missing from the California list.
How did they make it through Poughkeepsie without fucking it up? Impressive.