What's more important: the city itself or the metropolitan area?

[ducus]

What do you think it's most important: the city you're living in, or the metropolitan area?
Let's take an example: Detroit city, with a population of ~713000 people, and the metro area ~4296000 people. If you're living in Detroit, what interest you most? Your city or the suburbs and the metro area in the surroundings? I supose you want playground, parking lots, parks, jobs in your city, right? I sure don't want and i'm not interested in a job or recreation place 20, or 40 miles outside the city, because of the time, distance, gasoline spended etc.

[Manitopiaaa]

The metropolitan area only matters for companies, statisticians, and census bureau workers. I think if your focus is on parks and playgrounds, you would be more inclined to care about your city. Overall, though this doesn't mean the city's population is the best data point. The metropolitan population is more pertinent and appropriate when comparing urban areas. But for civic things like libraries, police, roads, and such, the city is more important

[ducus]

I think the same as you, that metro area counts only for the statisticans, what is more important is the city. But, on the other side, if you'd want to move in a certain city (as an immigrant or simple citizen), i think you should take in consideration the unemployment rate in that city and the job openings, and if the nearest suburbs or metro area offer more possibilities than the city. For example, it's far more hard to find a job into the city of Detroit than in the adiacent cities, that's why the unemployment rate is bigger in the city than in the metro area (surroundings). When everyone is moving on the suburbs, it's a signal that in the city your chance to find a job is smaller.

[Ichiban]

San Francisco's metropolitan area is way more important than the city itself. The city itself is tiny compared to the metro and the region's biggest industry (tech) is anchored further south in Silicon Valley. I would include Los Angeles as well. California's major metropoli are more multinodal than what you would typically find in the eastern part of the country.

[ducus]

Maybe you're right, but i speak from the perspective of the worker, of the commuters. Come on, how many of the residents of San Francisco are working in Redwood or Sunnyvale, 25-50 miles away? I think it's difficult and tiring to make such a distance daily.
How many of Chicago residents work in Naperville or Gary or another nearest city?

[Ichiban]

It's common here for people to live 25-50 miles away from work. Twitter, Zynga, and Salesforce have their headquarters in SF and most of the employees don't live in the city. A friend of mine lives in SF and works for Facebook down in Palo Alto. Hell an old coworker of mine would rent a motel from Sunday to Thursday and go home every weekend in Yosemite. The traffic here in the Bay Area is a bitch because everybody is driving in every goddamn direction during rush hour. That's just the reality here.

Here is why I say the metro is more important than the city (for SF anyways)...I grew up in San Jose and let's just say I was a child of the '80s. Up until the mid to late 90s American urban centers were on the decline because everybody wanted to live in a suburb. As a kid (and I know this is all anecdotal evidence but whatever) nobody considered SF as a glamorous place to be. Sure it was the big city next door but it was the type of place you might visit one weekend every year. Now cities have made their comeback and SF is one of the most expensive and desirable places in the country. I'm absolutely convinced that the city rebirth combined with Silicon Valley wealth has made San Francisco into the desirable location it is. Had the Valley never become the powerhouse it is I'm sure SF would be an ideal choice for city dwellers but rent would damn sure be affordable.

[Northsider]

Originally Posted by ducus

How many of Chicago residents work in Naperville or Gary or another nearest city?

The reverse commute is much less common (becoming more common nowadays though), but tons of Napervillians commute to Chicago. Hell, my boss commutes in from outside of Kenosha WI!

What do you mean "more important"? Cities don't live in tiny little bubbles no matter how badly residents want to think they do. You have to look at the entire package.

[-Corey-]

in cities like San Diego, I think the city is more important than the metropolitan area, maybe this is because the city itself is around 50% of the total MSA population. And I believe, in this case, Miami would fit that description, in which the metropolitan area is more important than the city itself.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by ducus

What do you think it's most important: the city you're living in, or the metropolitan area?
Let's take an example: Detroit city, with a population of ~713000 people, and the metro area ~4296000 people. If you're living in Detroit, what interest you most? Your city or the suburbs and the metro area in the surroundings? I supose you want playground, parking lots, parks, jobs in your city, right? I sure don't want and i'm not interested in a job or recreation place 20, or 40 miles outside the city, because of the time, distance, gasoline spended etc.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're asking...

Most residents of the city of Detroit shop and work in neighboring suburbs, so I guess, yes the suburbs are very important to their daily lives. As for the suburbanites, most have little to no daily interaction with the city, so the city has virtually no importance.

[Shawn]

It's also a function of how physically large the core city's municipal borders are. Boston is 48.4 sq miles in size, Houston is 579.4 sq miles. It's pretty much a case by case determination. I'd add that if you're looking to compare cities, metro area is the only thing you should be looking at. Boston vs. Houston being a perfect illustration why.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by ducus

What do you think it's most important: the city you're living in, or the metropolitan area?
Let's take an example: Detroit city, with a population of ~713000 people, and the metro area ~4296000 people. If you're living in Detroit, what interest you most? Your city or the suburbs and the metro area in the surroundings? I supose you want playground, parking lots, parks, jobs in your city, right? I sure don't want and i'm not interested in a job or recreation place 20, or 40 miles outside the city, because of the time, distance, gasoline spended etc.

The metropolitan area is really the key. Usually it encompasses & is roughly concurrent with the urbanized area. City limits are simply artificial political constructs.

[ducus]

I respect your thinking, but as far as i am concerned i care only about MY city, the city I live in and where i pay taxes. I'm not interested in another nearby cities just because i pass throgh them when i go to office!
Every city has it's own budget and mayor and everyone has striclty responsabilities over their city.
You say the city limits are artificially created? How come? But in the time of gold rush there were no metropolitan area, just cities! The city itself is the base, starting from Ancient Greek or Rome untill today!
They've invented the metro areas when they could no longer hide the impotency or the misery of a city, and they thought to cover this aspects losing them in "the big picture".
If you give away the blanket, you may discover things are not what they seem.

[spencer114]

I think hat the core city is more important. It is the cultural, business and government center of the metro. I do take interest in the counties and other cities in my metro area though. I want them all to flourish and don't see their gains as our loss or their loss as something that won't effect the core city. Here in Richmond there isn't much to do outside of the core city (aside from shopping malls and battlefields). The best parks, museums and restaurants are in the city. The suburbs are wealthy, home to some of the metro's biggest employers and kind of pretty but don't offer any kind of special experience.

[Shawn]

Again, situations change from city to city. Northeastern cities in particular with extremely small physical borders and without friendly annexation laws allowing for expansion cannot behave as though everything necessarily revolves around them. Boston is a great example - can you really say Cambridge (home of Harvard, MIT, a sizable portion of the country's largest and most profitable biotechs, etc.) plays such a second fiddle to Boston? You've got multiple heavy and light rail lines servicing Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Revere, Quincy, Milton, Braintree, Medford, Malden and Newton. You add up the land area of all these dense, urban communities - including Boston itself - and you still need another 200+ sq miles of city to approach the size of Houston.

Or how about Providence? 18 sq miles in total land area! Hartford is even smaller, something like 16 sq miles. These cities are forced to work with their neighboring communities a lot more closely and cohesively than a city with larger borders does.

Ducus, not sure where you live, but you say you're only concerned with the city you pay taxes to. Using Boston as an example again, whether you live in the city itself or any of the dozens of inner ring communities surrounding it, some of your taxes go to regional authorities like the MBTA, the Boston Water and Sewage Commission, NStar (Commonwealth Electric) and a slew of other agencies that service all regional communities, not just Boston.

Ignoring neighboring communities hurts regional prosperity, which in turn hurts the core city. It's a short-sighted way of looking at planning.

[hudkina]

If you were to fly into "Detroit", have a meeting at Ford Headquarters, spend the afternoon at the zoo, go shopping at the area's premier mall, catch a Pistons game that evening, and then stay the night at the most luxurious hotel in the area, you would never set foot in the city... The idea that the areas outside the primary city's municipal boundary are irrelevant to the identity of the city is silly. Nobody says, "Hey I'm flying into Romulus and heading over to Dearborn before going up to Royal Oak and then over to Troy and then up to Auburn Hills and then back down to Birmingham." They say, "Hey I have a business trip in Detroit..."

On the other hand, if you are a resident of a metropolitan area, you obviously have a stronger identity with your municipality of residence. You obviously care more about the taxes, schools, parks, emergency services, etc. of your particular municipality than you would about any other. But you still would have a sense of regional identity, and you still do have a stake in certain regional issues.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by ducus

I respect your thinking, but as far as i am concerned i care only about MY city, the city I live in and where i pay taxes. I'm not interested in another nearby cities just because i pass throgh them when i go to office!

You are right & like most of us put your own city, the place where you live, first. However, when comparing the size & importance of various regions, the ranking that counts most is by metro population, not city.

Were that not the case, artificially sprawled-out cities like Indianapolis, Nashville, & Jacksonville would carry more clout than relatively compact cities like Boston, San Francisco, or Washington DC.

[ducus]

I give you an example. I am from Romania and i can tell you that here the metro area are only on the paper, in reality every city and county is on his own. The funds are divided from the capital of the country and that's why many people are unhappy and would want territorial autonomy (especially the hungarian minority from Transilvania).
In such manner, very poor counties can't develop any furter, because they're keept in poverty by high unemployment and little funds.
I don't know how american society works and that's why i'm curious about the territorial organisation there.

[hudkina]

In Romania, most cities are entirely or nearly entirely within their municipal boundaries (commune). That's not the case for U.S. cities. Detroit as a municipality has barely 700,000 people, but the urban area has nearly 4 million people. On the other hand Timișoara has a municipal population of 316,000 and a metropolitan population of just 367,000.

[chicagogeorge]

Originally Posted by Northsider

The reverse commute is much less common (becoming more common nowadays though), but tons of Napervillians commute to Chicago. Hell, my boss commutes in from outside of Kenosha WI!

What do you mean "more important"? Cities don't live in tiny little bubbles no matter how badly residents want to think they do. You have to look at the entire package.

It is less common, that is for sure, but it's becoming more and more common. Also, fewer and fewer people are commuting into Chicago for work, while employment becomes decentralized.

Employers became much more decentralized across the Chicago area in the 1990s, with jobs opening at a rapid pace in the suburbs and collar counties that surround Chicago, according to U.S. census data. The northwest suburbs, for example, saw job growth of 3 percent from 1991 to 2009, according to state Department of Employment Security data. In Schaumburg, job growth spiked 30 percent in the same period.

Conversely, jobs declined by 9 percent in Chicago during that period and 6 percent across Cook County.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...eling-commutes



Saying that, just like the human body, a healthy core is vital. Not more important than the rest, just as important.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by hudkina

In Romania, most cities are entirely or nearly entirely within their municipal boundaries (commune). That's not the case for U.S. cities. Detroit as a municipality has barely 700,000 people, but the urban area has nearly 4 million people. On the other hand Timișoara has a municipal population of 316,000 and a metropolitan population of just 367,000.

Of course the major reason why many second tier European cities, have stayed within their local boundaries has been stable populations & the paucity of growth. Particularly in the East Euro countries like Romania, etc.

By contrast, the leading European cities like London, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Athens, Moscow, etc have grown & sprawled beyond their original boundaries.