4 ms·

Because the arbitrary political boundaries of individual cities are, well, arbitrary, it's usually more useful to compare Metropolitan Statistical Areas than co

Because the arbitrary political boundaries of individual cities are, well, arbitrary, it's usually more useful to compare Metropolitan Statistical Areas than constituent cities. This helps us avoid the confusion of assigning significance to the machinations of 19th century politicians when making modern regional comparisons. By that measure San Francisco is the 11th largest in the country. San Jose is 35th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...

harryh 9y ago
I don't entirely disagree with your point but the fact that Alameda & Contra Costa counties aren't part of San Francisco isn't so much due to the machinations of 19th century politicians as the fact that they are separated by quite a large body of water.
- dionidium 9y ago
  Geography isn't all that useful here, either, as long as it's not so extreme as to eliminate the anchor city's ability to wield economic influence (at which point, by definition, the region in question would no longer be in the same MSA as the anchor city). All we're trying to do here is come up with some way to compare cities that doesn't rely on the political and geographical borders that vary dramatically between regions. Why is Brooklyn part of NYC but West New York isn't? Why isn't East St. Louis in St. Louis? Why is Kansas City, KS something different from Kansas City, MO? Why does NYC get to claim Queens, but SFO doesn't get to claim Oakland? When Indianapolis politically joined with its surrounding county in 1970 to form Unigov, did something actually change about Indianapolis that justifies moving it around in regional rankings? Or is it the same as it was the day before, when those were two separate entities? The answers to those questions (or, really, the questions themselves) mostly confuse regional comparisons. If we want clarity, then we need something else. The MSA is usually a pretty good stand in. (But it's not the only one. What's important is just that you're aware of the core issue and try to account for it. Making anchor-city to anchor-city comparisons using only the borders of the anchor cities is almost always the worst means of comparison. Any measure that leads you believe that Austin, TX is "bigger" than Boston is a pretty bad one.)
DrScump 9y ago
... given a definition of "San Francisco" as including discontiguous regions like Oakland(!) and San Leandro and Alameda and San Lorenzo and Hayward, and then compare that to a definition of San Jose that omits the broader contiguous communities of Cupertino, Mountain View, Milpitas, Saratoga, etc. Um, okay.
- dionidium 9y ago
  You can take that up with the Office of Management and Budget, I guess (they're the folks who define the MSAs in the U.S., not me). My point is pretty clearly that there are better ways to compare cities that don't rely on political borders. I don't have strong opinions about the way the OMB chops up the SFBA. As I said before, that's just one way to do it.
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    You original statement was that it was "bizarre" to say SJ is bigger than SF. But you then went on to say that by land area and population it is, but by some other metric it isn't. I think the people took "bizarre" to be some kind of attack, but perhaps that wasn't your intended meaning. Certainly using size or land area to call SJ bigger isn't that weird, despite the OMB using other metrics.
    - dionidium 9y ago
      The "bizarre" part is that the statement "San Jose is bigger than San Francisco" is technically true while also self-evidently ridiculous. In other words, I hope nobody thought I was attacking tptacek! What he said is fine! Again, it does have the attractive quality of being true, even if it obviously isn't true :) A more revealing example is the statement "Austin is bigger than Boston" which is, again, only true in the most narrow sense. What any reasonable person thinks of as "Boston" is much larger than Austin. I mean this in the most common-sense way imaginable. Say your dream was to move to a "big city" and your choices were Austin and Boston. If you used the statistics within each city's political borders to decide which to move to, you'd paradoxically end up in the smaller city. That "Austin" has more people within its arbitrarily-drawn political borders is mostly just trivia. That fact doesn't help us make useful comparisons; in fact, it pretty clearly misleads. (At bottom, there's no other reason to have this conversation than this last point. We're just looking for a way to compare cities that adds value and clarifies. A system of comparison that leads you to believe Austin is bigger than Boston fails that test.)

harryh 9y ago

I don't entirely disagree with your point but the fact that Alameda & Contra Costa counties aren't part of San Francisco isn't so much due to the machinations of 19th century politicians as the fact that they are separated by quite a large body of water.

dionidium 9y ago
Geography isn't all that useful here, either, as long as it's not so extreme as to eliminate the anchor city's ability to wield economic influence (at which point, by definition, the region in question would no longer be in the same MSA as the anchor city). All we're trying to do here is come up with some way to compare cities that doesn't rely on the political and geographical borders that vary dramatically between regions. Why is Brooklyn part of NYC but West New York isn't? Why isn't East St. Louis in St. Louis? Why is Kansas City, KS something different from Kansas City, MO? Why does NYC get to claim Queens, but SFO doesn't get to claim Oakland? When Indianapolis politically joined with its surrounding county in 1970 to form Unigov, did something actually change about Indianapolis that justifies moving it around in regional rankings? Or is it the same as it was the day before, when those were two separate entities? The answers to those questions (or, really, the questions themselves) mostly confuse regional comparisons. If we want clarity, then we need something else. The MSA is usually a pretty good stand in. (But it's not the only one. What's important is just that you're aware of the core issue and try to account for it. Making anchor-city to anchor-city comparisons using only the borders of the anchor cities is almost always the worst means of comparison. Any measure that leads you believe that Austin, TX is "bigger" than Boston is a pretty bad one.)

DrScump 9y ago

... given a definition of "San Francisco" as including discontiguous regions like Oakland(!) and San Leandro and Alameda and San Lorenzo and Hayward, and then compare that to a definition of San Jose that omits the broader contiguous communities of Cupertino, Mountain View, Milpitas, Saratoga, etc. Um, okay.

dionidium 9y ago
You can take that up with the Office of Management and Budget, I guess (they're the folks who define the MSAs in the U.S., not me). My point is pretty clearly that there are better ways to compare cities that don't rely on political borders. I don't have strong opinions about the way the OMB chops up the SFBA. As I said before, that's just one way to do it.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  You original statement was that it was "bizarre" to say SJ is bigger than SF. But you then went on to say that by land area and population it is, but by some other metric it isn't. I think the people took "bizarre" to be some kind of attack, but perhaps that wasn't your intended meaning. Certainly using size or land area to call SJ bigger isn't that weird, despite the OMB using other metrics.
  - dionidium 9y ago
    The "bizarre" part is that the statement "San Jose is bigger than San Francisco" is technically true while also self-evidently ridiculous. In other words, I hope nobody thought I was attacking tptacek! What he said is fine! Again, it does have the attractive quality of being true, even if it obviously isn't true :) A more revealing example is the statement "Austin is bigger than Boston" which is, again, only true in the most narrow sense. What any reasonable person thinks of as "Boston" is much larger than Austin. I mean this in the most common-sense way imaginable. Say your dream was to move to a "big city" and your choices were Austin and Boston. If you used the statistics within each city's political borders to decide which to move to, you'd paradoxically end up in the smaller city. That "Austin" has more people within its arbitrarily-drawn political borders is mostly just trivia. That fact doesn't help us make useful comparisons; in fact, it pretty clearly misleads. (At bottom, there's no other reason to have this conversation than this last point. We're just looking for a way to compare cities that adds value and clarifies. A system of comparison that leads you to believe Austin is bigger than Boston fails that test.)