Talk:Micropolitan statistical area

Comment

This article and Micropolis both cover the Census Bureau definition and creation of micropolitan statistical areas. --Swid 19:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

If these areas are drawing "refugees" (bad terminology) as the article says, and have all sorts of advantages over larger metropolitan areas, then why isn't their share of the population set to increase? Article fails to explain. Mjk2357 19:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Mjk2357: Whether or not you agree with the conclusions of Thomas, this does not make the claim "dubious" that he coined the term in 1989. It is generally agreed upon by regional economists that he came up with it and/or popularized it in this article. Then, in 2000 the Census bureau started formally using the term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BurkeyAcademy (talk • contribs) 19:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Much of this article seems to be lifted right from this magazine-feature-type article here: http://www.matr.net/article-11115.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.255.76.43 (talk • contribs) 16:51, 9 July 2007.

The Iowa State monograph merely used "micropolitan" as a synonym for "nonmetropolitan," which is not at all the same as Thomas' definition. The Iowa State authors considered all rural areas, no matter how sparsely settled, to be micropolitan. Thomas limited the term to regions that are economically dominated by small core cities that meet specific population requirements. He depicted micropolitan areas as miniature versions of metropolitan areas, which is the concept that was embraced subsequently by the Census Bureau. As such, he coined the term "micropolitan" as currently used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.213.147.254 (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Abbreviation

Please note the following section of the Manual of Style:

Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms Generally avoid the making up of new abbreviations, especially acronyms. For example, while it is reasonable to provide World Union of Billiards as a translation of Union Mondiale de Billard, the former is not the organization's name, and it does not use the acronym or initialism WUB; when referring to it in short form, use the official abbreviation UMB. In a wide table of international economic data, it might be desirable to abbreviate a United States gross national product heading; this might be done with the widely recognized initialisms US and GNP spaced together, with a link to appropriate articles, if it is not already explained: US GNP, rather than the made-up initialism USGNP.

This article and others on Wikipedia use the made-up abbreviation μSA for Micropolitan Statistical Area. I have not seen this abbreviation used by OMB, the Census Bureau, or any other authoritative source. If anyone has a reference supporting the use of this abbreviation, please provide it, otherwise the use of this abbreviation violates the Wikipedia style guideline and should be changed. --Russ (talk) 12:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

This abbreviation has been used since the United States Census Bureau defined the concept of a Micropolitan Statistical Area. The Census Bureau itself does not use abbreviations for any of its statistical areas. The Greek lowercase letter μ (mu) is used to denote "micro-" in the International System of Units. --Buaidh (talk) 06:58, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

"This abbreviation has been used" -- yes, but by whom? The style guide cites WP:NOR, which means that reliable sources are needed to demonstrate use of the abbreviation. FYI, a Google search for μSA turns up about 3,790 hits, but "μSA -Wikipedia" returns only 1,330, and all the ones that refer to micropolitan areas appear to be Wikipedia mirror sites. --Russ (talk) 09:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

If the abbreviation is kept, it must be fixed to use the "micro sign" character (Unicode 0xB5: µ or Alt-0181 for Windows input) instead of the Greek letter mu (Unicode 0x3BC: μ). They may look the same in many fonts, but have different semantic differences, and the micro sign may be present in some fonts that do not have the Greek subrange. Also see Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 22#Greek letters for a request to correct all the redirects create with "mu" in the name. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

MP?

Whats mp on the map, guam, peurto trico, virigin islands and mp. WTF is mp? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.18.213 (talk) 02:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The abbreviations are an add-on to the map, and appear to be described in List of U.S. state abbreviations TEDickey (talk) 09:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Statistical area which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Coininng of term

I have removed here the claim, marked as dubious for more than a year, that Thomas coined the term in 1989. The reason for the dubious tag was given as "A book titled Micropolitan development: Theory and practice of greater-rural economic development Luther G. Tweeten was published in 1976. If the definition there is the same, Thomas didn't coin it first." Tweeten defines micropolitan as

Micropolitan, as used in this book, refers to the small cities, towns, and open country of America. Micropolitan is a broad term. For statistical purposes, however, data used throughout the book for micropolitan areas are confined primarily to areas defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census as nonmetropolitan. These areas include all counties that contain no city or twin cities of 50,000 or more population.[1]

This is not quite the same as our article definition, but is close enough to be considered the same concept and thus show that Thomas didn't coin it as a term (although he might still have framed the current definition). As a word with other meanings it may be even older.[2] SpinningSpark 17:51, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

The following was posted by Thomas to the Helpdesk. I copy it to here where it it more relevant. Maproom (talk) 19:23, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Micropolitan Statistical Area

G. Scott Thomas again.

I was unaware of Luther Tweeten until I was told about this mini-controversy over micropolitan areas. I have since tracked down a copy of his 1976 book. He specifies on the very first page that “micropolitan” refers to the 31 percent of the nation’s residents who did not live in counties officially included in metropolitan areas.

Micropolitan, in Tweeten’s definition, is everything that is not metropolitan.

My 1989 article in American Demographics and my 1990 book, The Rating Guide to Life in America’s Small Cities, took a considerably different tack. I established a series of six ground rules for micropolitan area, required them, among other things to have a central city of at least 15,000 residents and a surrounding county of at least 40,000 residents.

My definition of micropolitan, therefore, is much different from Tweeten’s. My micropolitan areas were minature versions of metropolitan areas. It was this definition that was adopted (and tweaked) by the Office of Management and Budget when it formally created micropolitan areas a decade later. (And I, indeed, was contacted by a member of the task force that created the new micropolitan areas.)

Several news articles in 1989 followed up on my article about micropolitan areas. Here’s an example from the Deseret News in Salt Lake City: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/75290/LOGAN-A-MIGHTY-MICROPOLIS.html?pg=all

And another from the Chicago Tribune in that year: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-04-22/news/8904060973_1_micropolitan-areas-suburbs

And Kiplinger’s: http://books.google.com/books?id=qAMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&dq=%22g.+scott+thomas%22+micropolitan&hl=en&sa=X&ei=icfCU7ubCsyGyASQgYKgCg&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22g.%20scott%20thomas%22%20micropolitan&f=false

Academic organizations have long acknowledged my role in creating the term, such as the Southern Regional Science Association: http://journal.srsa.org/ojs/index.php/RRS/article/download/41.23.7/pdf‎

If you need more information, please let me know.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.180.30.119 (talk) 18:05, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

So Tweeten defined it as 0–50,000 and Thomas defined it as 10,000–50,000. Both are talking about defining a region for statistical purposes. That is not so big a difference that they can be claimed to be coining of two different terms. The claim rather, is not so much coining as that the US Census Bureau use of the term is based on Thomas's work. This seems to be very much implied, but no source has actually stated that outright. The closest is the SRSA paper. By the way, the url for this is corrupt, but this seems to work. SpinningSpark 23:50, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

G. Scott Thomas response: You're missing a key distinction. Tweeten was not talking about defining a region. His use of "micropolitan" encompassed every county that did not have a central city of 50,000 or more. OMB and the Census Bureau define a metropolitan area as a county or adjacent counties that are focused on a central city of 50,000 or more. That means Tweeten was simply taking all of America that was not part of any metropolitan area and giving it the blanket name of micropolitan. I defined a micropolitan area as a county or counties focused on a central city of 15,000 to 49,999 (provided that the county or counties had a total population of at least 40,000), essentially creating a small-town version of a metropolitan area. That's very different from what Tweeten meant. He divided the whole country into metropolitan or micropolitan. My system provided for metropolitan and micropolitan areas, as well as a large part of the nation that was neither. The latter is the system that was subsequently adopted by OMB and the Census Bureau. -- GST — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.180.30.119 (talk • contribs) 02:18, 14 July 2014‎

I have indented your post per our talk page conventions. I had not really missed that distinction, I was ignoring it. It makes no difference to who has claim to have coined the term. As I said above, the article could say that the OMB use of this term is based on Thomas's work if there is a reliable source that unambiguously makes that statement. That's my opininon of the matter, if you dispute that, we can ask other editors to comment to settle it. SpinningSpark 08:01, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Let me help clarify in support of Thomas: It is certain that he didn't coin the word "Micropolitan", but that he did create the idea of a "Micropolitan Area". Spinningspark wants to ignore the difference between "all nonmetro areas", which would include all of Antarctica, and an area surrounding a small central town. I am the co-editor of the journal (Review of Regional Studies) cited above (See SRSA). This is not about how the OMB or the Census Bureau uses the term, but how everyone in the field of Regional Science uses the term now.BurkeyAcademy (talk) 00:29, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad that you appreciate my point about coining. There is no need to keep emphasising to me the difference between the usage of Tweeten and Thomas, I understand it. When I said I was ignoring it, I did not mean that the difference was not important, or that I think Antarctica is micropolitan (although they seem to have managed to generate some inner city squalor in places.) I was ignoring this discussion of the difference because it is irrelevant to the question of whether Wikipedia should be making the claim that the OMB/Census Bureau use is based on the work of Thomas. For that a reliable source stating that to be the case unambiguously and directly is what is required. No source presented so far has done that, although Thomas and OMB might be discussed in the same passage. I don't doubt that it is true, but Wikipedia text should be based on what is found in sources. There is a compromise here, we can simply give the facts found in the sources without making any implicit claim of the link between them. Something along the lines of "Tweeten said x in 19xx, Thomas said y in 19yy, and OMB/CB currently do z." SpinningSpark 01:21, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

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There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Combined Statistical Area which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

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Possible standards revision

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-19/pdf/2021-00988.pdf Mapsax (talk) 02:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Need to update list

This list is out of date per latest OMB list published July 2023 which has moved several micropolitan areas to metro areas and vise versa. Estimates should also be updated for 2022 numbers to match updates to metropolitan areas. Kjslaughter (talk) 19:49, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I have taken care of this. Some of the statistical units don't have links. If there was an already existing page, I kept that link. If the micro area consists of only one county or county-equivalent, I just linked to that county or equivalent. If the micro area is new with no page associated with it and consists of multiple counties, I left it as text only. The same goes for the CSAs. If the CSA listed is not linked, it's because the page either does not exist yet or the related page associated with it has been completely redfined to the point where the old page is no longer accurate. Some of these pages will have to be created, or possibly have old pages re-written to redefine some of these micros and CSAs. Finally, there is some kind of broken reference or notes on this page (per the error message on the bottom of this page) but I am unfamiliar with what it is that is broken. If anyone has any questions, let me know! I will be moving onto the list of CSA page itself soon. Coulraphobic123 (talk) 20:19, 8 October 2023 (UTC)