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There have been plenty of threads on City Data talking about metro areas and how centralized and decentralized they are. To an extent, every metro area is centralized and decentralized since it's impossible that100% of the jobs, amenities, and infrastructure within a metro can be contained in one small area (unless it's a small town that has 5,000 people), but there are obviously some metro areas that are more centralized than others.
A good example of a relatively centralized metro region is Chicago: while the suburban parts of Chicago contain a good chunk of business, retail, and other amenities and attractions, the city of Chicago itself acts as the sole epicenter of not only it's own metro, but a large chunk of the Great Lakes region in terms of amenities, attractions, businesses, jobs, etc.
On the flip side, a good example of a relatively decentralized metro region is the San Francisco Bay Area (inclusive of Santa Clara County): the East Bay (anchored by Oakland), South Bay (anchored by San Jose), and Peninsula/SF all act majorly within their own orbit, with only a somewhat disproportionately large job center in SF but with total jobs within the metro region being spread out nearly evenly throughout the Bay Area (though the North Bay is still pretty suburban with no real defined center yet).
In addition to a poll, let's also just have a discussion. I'm sure a lot of this can be quantified with numbers, but a lot of it is also how local residents feel.
This is the case in pretty much every Metro Area, most jobs in suburbia.
Let's qualify jobs:
Most service and low-level service jobs are spread around evenly between all areas of population. Most commercial office space, though, in terms of square footage (and specifically class A) is usually downtown.
Exceptions are places like Detroit and St. Louis (Clayton).
Pittsburgh is among the most "centralized" major metro areas I've ever been to in this respect. The Twin Cities are up there (I'd count both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul as centers of gravity), but Bloomington, the Golden Triangle, 394 Strip, Brooklyn Park, and 3M's campus, Cargill's, and Medtronic's are all major suburban office areas.
I've speculated about why Pittsburgh is so extremely centralized. I think it's just a space thing. There are so many cities that were clearly stand-alone towns that have been absorbed into the metro area. They had pretty localized, service oriented economies and their own small downtowns. They are usually-- but not always-- tucked between massive hills. Providing the transit infrastructure alone to build up in most of suburban Pittsburgh would be a nightmare. Plus, a lot of the existing commercial and residential stock in suburban Pittsburgh is probably protected by the historians, or there'd be a huge stink if its not and somebody attempted tearing it down...
Baltimore and DC really do feel like different worlds. You can obviously tell when you've left one and entered the next. That is not how a CSA should be but they also have enough development between them to be a CSA I guess. You cant tell when you left San Jose for either San Francisco or Oakland. The IE obviously feels nothing more than a huge suburb of LA.
Downtown Toronto has about 15-20% of metro area jobs, but close to 50% of office space, so I would say it's pretty centralized. If you add Midtown to the core, then it's a bit above 50%.
Baltimore and DC really do feel like different worlds. You can obviously tell when you've left one and entered the next. That is not how a CSA should be but they also have enough development between them to be a CSA I guess. You cant tell when you left San Jose for either San Francisco or Oakland. The IE obviously feels nothing more than a huge suburb of LA.
Quote:
From wikipedia: The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines combined statistical areas based on social and economic ties measured by commuting patterns between adjacent MSAs.
So Baltimore and DC MSAs are in the same CSA simply because there's a lot of commuting between the two. A CSA will be either decentralized or have multiple centers almost by definition.
(I'm not sure how they support keeping the NY and Philadelphia areas in different CSAs by this definition, as there's a lot of commuting from central Jersey to both cores, but it's probably a good thing; New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA is already unwieldy)
Most service and low-level service jobs are spread around evenly between all areas of population. Most commercial office space, though, in terms of square footage (and specifically class A) is usually downtown.
Varies a LOT. In the Washington, D.C. area, there's a ton of office space in the edge cities along the beltway, between Washington and Baltimore, and out the I-270 corridor towards Frederick, also out I-66 in Virginia; it's quite decentralized.
In the Philadelphia area there's also large employment centers in the suburbs along the Main Line/Rt 30 and on the Route 202 corridor, not to the extent of D.C but still somewhat decentralized. There's also plenty of office space in the Cherry Hill area on the other side of Philadelphia.
The NYC/NNJ/LI area is much more centralized; the vast majority of the office space is in Manhattan, with other much smaller concentrations in Hudson County and Newark; the suburbs fit the 'bedroom community' model fairly well. It's not completely centralized, of course; there's quite a number of office parks in the western part of the area, e.g. in Morris County, NJ.
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