I hear some cities call the larger area as metro (Vancouver) and other cities call it greater (Toronto). Is there a functional difference? Generally speaking, is one more urbanized than the other?

    • imaqtpie@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      NYC is a bad example because it’s an extreme outlier in terms of size and density. But the metropolitan area is actually much larger than the urban area; here’s a map of all the counties within the NYC metropolitan area.

      It covers 8,200 square miles, just slightly less than the area of New Jersey.

      Metropolitan areas are quite large and typically include the core city along with the entire surrounding area that is economically and culturally heavily linked with the core city.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

      Here is a map of all the metropolitan and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Micropolitan areas are essentially defined the same way, except the core urban area of a micropolitan area is <50,000 population, while a metropolitan area has a core city of >50,000 population.

      You can see that metropolitan areas include vast areas that are not even remotely urban. Beyond that, there is also a category called the Combined Statistical Area, which often combine multiple metropolitan areas.

      Here is a map of LA where the red areas are urban areas, the beige counties are part of the Metropolitan Area, and the yellow counties are part of the CSA.

      Greater LA

      The CSA for LA is a whopping 34,000 square miles, or slightly larger than the island of Ireland or the state of South Carolina. However, it only contains about 2,300 square miles of urban area. Estimating the urban area is even more of an imperfect science than the metropolitan area, so I’m not sure how they calculated that number.

      When people say Greater Boston or Greater Toronto, they are usually referring to the MSA, but might also be referring to the CSA.