DC-Balt Overtakes Chicago As 3rd Biggest CSA (Washington: place to live, things to do)

[the resident09]

Originally Posted by Charlotte485

Over 4 years in a transient city with a username of Charlotte485. I guess my cover is blown that I’m not a native Washingtonian.


I’m simply responding to what I think is an overblown “but Baltimore & Washington metropolitan areas are so different and independent of eachother”. The proximity alone between the two makes it seem very rational the two are a legit Combined Statistical Area as much as any other CSA.





Yes. Culpeper & Leesburg to me feel like they belong in the same metropolitan region. I think a lot of the exurban VA counties have a vibe - different from DC & the inner VA suburbs - and the MD side heading towards Baltimore have a distinct vibe. I don’t think that changes the fact that The Baltimore-Washington area is a legit CSA. One could make similar arguments about San Jose - San Francisco - Oakland. I’d be shocked if they didn’t have posters going on and on about San Jose being distinct etc

Long story short. I think the strong feelings about Baltimore & Washington being so separate enough to not be a CSA is more emotional than going by the criteria every other CSA is based upon.

The real issue is that MSA's are overblown metrics of a city's sphere or influence and it's pretty flawed IMO. I really think that gets dismissed too much because CSA's are just combinations of MSA's. Baltimore and Washington are certainly a clear, and not only that maybe the prime example in the nation of what a Combined Statistical Area is. They deserve to be combined at the CSA level regardless of what anyone thinks of that metric, it is only one population metric. They are not one city, MSA, and they don't have to be...because they are both strong individually, but they genuinely do overlap with one another. They're two bubbles of major metro population encroaching each other's outer suburbs. There is a greater DC area, a greater Baltimore area, and a greater Washington-Baltimore area where the suburbs overlap, each are true. You see this on signs of business or trucks driving around the region all the time.

I wish they would cut down MSA boundaries honestly and cut out a lot of the rural MSA fluff from metros everywhere. Probably for the DC MSA this would mean cutting the metro pop down to about 5.8 million, but would show the true greater population density, and then when counting the double sphere CSA with Baltimore you'd see a more accurate CSA total around 8 million. I think DC-Baltimore truly feels like an 8 million or so combined metro area, not 10 mil. But like you said they very legitimately should, and do form a CSA.

[Veritas Vincit]

I don't mind or care that they're a CSA, that's just a statistical term, but I think it's delusional to think they're the same metro area though or that people have any kind of joint identity in those terms. And I know that certain people try to push that (who knows why? so the area is ranked higher on national lists they can brag about on the internet?) but D.C. and Baltimore are two separate cities with two separate suburban spheres that do overlap thanks to proximity but still maintain very separate identities.

[ecko_complex24]

Originally Posted by Charlotte485

I think you're too hung up on the fact I've only lived in DC in the same neighborhood for 4 years so you want to wag your tail about Culpeper and Charlottesville and places I frankly don't care about. I've worked in Tysons on the same team for 4 years. I have a lot of colleagues from Warrenton, Culpeper, Leesburg, Ashburn, Vienna. Our happy hours tend to be in Tysons & team outings in Leesburg. It'll be much better to visit my friend who lives in Ashburn once the Silver Line Extension is open... How many years do you think it takes to become familiar with a place? 10?

Maybe I just wasn't clear on my sarcasm earlier. There is a bunch of traffic between people going between the two states within the CSA. There is a lot of interaction between the MD and VA side of the CSA.

I'm simple getting at the Washington-Baltimore is a Combined Statistical Area as much as anywhere else and that Baltimore isn't so secluded from Washington, D.C. The topic of Washington and Baltimore being within the same CSA derails so many topics for pages and pages on the main forum. Pages of "Baltimore is distinct! it's not really the same CSA, there is no interaction, they don't have much cooperation, well then Baltimore is the 3rd largest CSA" and it gets old. It gets old reading it from Chicago folks who say it's not really one area, it gets old hearing it from Baltimore people who insist they "stand on their own". Because it seems emotional. Personal anecdotal travel habits that don't reflect the true commuting patterns/interactions. Maybe someone who lives in Ashburn thinks Baltimore is just totally separate but someone from Silver Spring might view BWI more convenient than IAD or Baltimore more convenient than Loudon.

Leesburg, Culpeper, etc. is all exurban fringe DC MSA towns to me. If you want to go ahead and point out all the ways the far out towns in the VA Metro area are so unique and different from each other and this and that because you're a local yocal, by all means. They'll all feel similar to me whether I'm here 4 years or 40 years....

If you don’t care about the places that I mention, then how do you know so much about them to make vast generalizations about them????

I don’t know what that whole bloated second paragraph is about. I never refuted any of those points about Baltimore or DC being so distinct from one another that they would have their own CSAs. I work with people from Anne Arundel who feel just as much cultural ties to DC as they do to Baltimore.

I’m not too hung up on that fact. It seems that you haven’t done much traveling around the DC area given the ridiculous and pompous statements you have made about differ towns on this board. You sound like a yuppy transplant who thinks that anything west of Arlington is all the same and void any signifying culture or sense of place.

[Charlotte485]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

I don't mind or care that they're a CSA, that's just a statistical term, but I think it's delusional to think they're the same metro area though or that people have any kind of joint identity in those terms. And I know that certain people try to push that (who knows why? so the area is ranked higher on national lists they can brag about on the internet?) but D.C. and Baltimore are two separate cities with two separate suburban spheres that do overlap thanks to proximity but still maintain very separate identities.

There’s people who push it from both angles IMO. Some people brag about it, some people roll their eyes at it. Some metropolitan areas are yuge, some city limits are yuge.


I think the “overlap thanks to the proximity” and the hundreds of thousands or more who live in the overlap probably is why I consider it a pretty conjoined area. Especially with people in say Odenton & Laurel. For a large segment, it seems more real rather than just a statistical anomaly.

Frederick, Calvert, PG, Montgomery, etc I could see most people not seeing that big of a difference and probably feel like it’s the same overall area. I’d imagine there are shares malls, shopping, regular errands where one hops between the areas.

San Francisco & Oakland (and San Jose) come to mind as an area with separate identities, (had) NFL teams, very close proximity that have very distinct identities. Winston-Salem & Greensboro come to mind.

In any event. It really does come down to context. If it’s a measuring contest between DC being bigger than Chicago & using the CSA to justify it. Thats fubar. In the context of regional cooperation, MD funding the purple line, VRE & MARC merging or having through service once Long Bridge is complete, JetBlue taking over spirit and having large operations at BWI (which would make me consider BWI when choosing flights), better access to Annapolis, etc. then it becomes a legit relevance. It seems less likely DC gets an aquarium being that the National Aquarium exist (and how it came to be.).

It would also be odd to not plan for a future where Baltimore & Washington aren’t even more conjoined. We need less sprawl, more density and there’s a lot of potential, particularly for Baltimore, to have closer ties to Washington structurally (not talking about identities). In that context too, it seems natural to talk about the area as the “capital region” or whatever thing they try to brand the broader area. As long as infrastructure and regional cooperation is happening, I wouldn’t care what it’s called. I’d like to see VRE to Richmond after long bridge is complete (which is the plan) and try to tie Richmond & Washington closer in the “overlap”. I’d like to see the entire Bos-Wash corridor, among other areas in the country to grow into each other, sustainably, connected by rail, etc. “identity” doesn’t have much of a role on regional cooperation for jobs, national events, mobility, transportation planning, etc so that’s why identity probably figures less to me.

Context matters. Intent. Personal anecdotal experiences. Interpretations.

[the resident09]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

I don't mind or care that they're a CSA, that's just a statistical term, but I think it's delusional to think they're the same metro area though or that people have any kind of joint identity in those terms. And I know that certain people try to push that (who knows why? so the area is ranked higher on national lists they can brag about on the internet?) but D.C. and Baltimore are two separate cities with two separate suburban spheres that do overlap thanks to proximity but still maintain very separate identities.

Yeah I don't think that last part really matters. The two make up a mega-region it's really not all that serious. Whether people living in or around it know it, care about it, or boost it, or not, having the same cultural identity doesn't separate two overlapping population spheres from being counted together. There is significant enough activity of the Baltimore and Washington metros to constitute a metric of calculating what the two add up to combined, as well as separated. Adding the total up of the DC-Baltimore area population is no different than calculating the SoCal LA-Riverside mega region, or South Florida in it's totality, or the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Bay area. So the fact that it's more populated than Chicagoland now doesn't prop up a specific city like DC. Because DC alone has it's own population metric to count it's own MSA.

[paytonc]

Originally Posted by Charlotte485

Because in Chicago, people from Kenosha Wisconsin to nearly SouthBend Indiana all feels the same. Wisconsin lites frequently, nearly every other day visit Indiana.

You won’t see Virginians and Marylanders cross the border like the Wisconsin folk and Indianan folk do in Chicagoland (Chicago people always leave the city to Indiana).

I've lived in both Chicago and DC for 10+ years, on both south and north sides of both cities.

In Chicago, I joked that my #1 hobby was "avoiding the suburbs." I had no reason to leave the city. Not only do Wisconsinites not visit Indiana (whatever for?), heck most city residents don't leave their side of town! In ten years there, I never made it to all five satellite cities (Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, Joliet, Gary), didn't step foot in all of the collar counties, and only went to Milwaukee or South Bend (each 100! miles away) twice. And that's not because I stayed at home; I've biked in every one of Chicago's 77 neighborhoods.

I leave DC several times a week now, and have had jobs and schools that took me to Virginia daily. I went to metro Baltimore three times last week... just for fun.

And I'm not the only one crossing more state lines. Per the Census, in 2019...
- 25 commuters from Kenosha County WI (~80,000 total workers) commute over two state lines, to Lake County IN
- 365 commuters from Franklin County PA (~65,000 total workers) commute over two state lines, to Loudoun, Fairfax, or Arlington VA

We could go back and forth all day on this, but these arguments always end up with someone asserting that no, it's all about feels. To which I've written:

The Los Angeles, Washington-Baltimore, and San Jose-San Francisco regions all have (or will soon have) larger populations and economies than Chicago. Yet the crowds and skyscrapers of Chicago's Loop certainly gives it more of a bustling big city feel than any of the other three regions.

The reason comes down, mostly, to timing: Chicago, like New York, boomed around 1900, when railroads were the primary means of travel and fed highly centralized downtown business districts. LA, Washington, and the Bay Area all came of age later in the 20th century, when widespread auto ownership led to much more dispersed urbanization. These “polycentric” regions have their populations and economies spread across multiple smaller centers, which each have individual specializations.

Some are larger than others, but they're deeply interlinked on a daily basis by cross-commuting. For instance, while downtown Chicago rivals the District in terms of office space and employment, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs have over twice as much office as Chicago's suburbs do.

Chicago has its largest banking offices adjacent to its government offices, and its plush shops another few blocks over. That certainly makes for an impressive skyline, but it's not intrinsically better than having the bank offices in Tysons and the government offices in Federal Triangle. (If it were better, things would've evolved that way!)

[Pupwaf]

DC is oddly disjointed. Not only does Baltimore feel like a totally separate city, but so does Bethesda, Silver Spring, and many parts of NOVA. There’s no real cohesion in the area. The DMV seriously lacks any sense of “place.” It’s kinda of sad that Baltimore is losing population and is Considered a rust belt city but probably has 10x the personality of DC. The CSA statistics are essentially just a geographic observation more than anything. Congrats, the northeast corridor has a lot of population. That was true pre pandemic, slightly less true after.

[boreatwork]

Originally Posted by Pupwaf

DC is oddly disjointed. Not only does Baltimore feel like a totally separate city, but so does Bethesda, Silver Spring, and many parts of NOVA. There’s no real cohesion in the area. The DMV seriously lacks any sense of “place.” It’s kinda of sad that Baltimore is losing population and is Considered a rust belt city but probably has 10x the personality of DC. The CSA statistics are essentially just a geographic observation more than anything. Congrats, the northeast corridor has a lot of population. That was true pre pandemic, slightly less true after.

Thats bc Baltimore doesn't really have any CBD outside of Baltimore to compare maybe Towson. Whether if that gives it 10 time more personality is entirely your opinion.

[NOVAmtneer82]

Where is there a ton of 'personality' in Baltimore? It's got a downtown that is meh (Pittsburgh PA, another Rust Belt city has a much nicer one), the Inner Harbor is half empty because of crime, it has a few decent neighborhoods with the rest looking like you're in an episode of the Wire, a crime rate that makes a much larger city like DC blush, many of its inner suburbs seem tired and aging in a bad way...I must be missing it.

[vivo]

Wonder what he meant by personality?