Here Are the Real Boundaries of American Metropolises, Decided by an Algorithm
How is the U.S. actually split geographically?
by Sarah Laskow November 30, 2016
When we think about where we live, usually our ideas start with political boundaries—we’d say we live in a particular state, city, or town. Ask about a neighborhood, sports team loyalties, or regions not defined by borders, though, and it might get a little fuzzier. In densely settled places like the East Coast, sprawl can make it hard to draw lines around places, too. Where in New Jersey does the New York City region end and the Philadelphia region begin?
These larger urban areas are sometimes called “megaregions,” and in a new paper, published in PLOS ONE, Garrett Dash Nelson, a historical geographer from Dartmouth, and Alasdair Rae, an urban analyst from the University of Sheffield, teamed up to identify them across the United States, using commuting data and a computational algorithm.
Essentially, they used data describing more than 4 million commutes to look at how small units of place—census tracts—are connected into much larger units of place. One of the results from their algorithm is the map above, which shows how the country is divided into economically entwined regions that don’t conform to city or state boundaries. Pittsburgh’s region spills into Ohio and West Virginia; Denver’s tips over the border into Wyoming; and Oklahoma City’s reaches into Missouri and Arkansas.
Where in New Jersey does the New York City region end and the Philadelphia region begin?
Funnily enough, the line is right where it's been for over 325 years, when NJ was divided into the Provinces of East and West Jersey -- now considered "North" and "South" Jersey, respectively. You can tell by where the Yankees/Giants/Rangers pennants switch over to Phillies/Eagles/Flyers. (Don't let anyone tell you there's something called "Central Jersey"; those people are itching for a fight.)
Of course, under my avatar I list my address the way I have always seen it.
Take NY city (geographically anyway).
Manhattan is an island but "New York city" includes Staten Island (also an island, which is actually closer to NJ then NY state) the Bronx (part of the mainland) and Queens and Brooklyn (which are on Long Island).
