Talk:Greater Cleveland

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[edit] What is Greater Cleveland?

The initial section of this article should probably be rewritten to clarify the scope of the article and whether it covers only suburban Cleveland or Northeast Ohio. Going by the PMSA or CMSA has the advantage of making clear boundaries by county. Going by the suburbs is more correct for "Greater Cleveland" but is a lot harder to define, since Summit County, for example, is split into Cleveland suburbs like Twinsburg and Macedonia and Akron suburbs to the south. I prefer a Northeast Ohio emphasis for the article but if it remains a Greater Cleveland article the Northeast Ohio redirect and discussion should be removed. --Beirne 12:34, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a census expert, but as far as I can tell (see United States metropolitan area) the CMSA/PMSA rubric has been scrapped, thus I changed Greater Cleveland to reflect the new guidelines. Per the article name, I removed most information concerning the Akron MSA/PMSA, as Greater Cleveland almost always (in my experience) connotes the areas in the Cleveland MSA, although there are the overlapping communities in Summit County that should be mentioned. I wasn't certain what to do with the Northeast Ohio information, I didn't know that Northeast Ohio redirected to here. With the end of the Akron/Cleveland CMSA and Northeast Ohio's boundaries beyond these MSAs, I think it makes more sense to make NE Ohio a seperate article (I've even seen Tuscarawas County included in Northeast Ohio, which is clearly not Greater Cleveland), but I am amenable to combining them if desired. Some guidelines will have to be determined for NE Ohio (esp. in regard to listings) other than where "most people" think the boundaries are (this is obvious to you of course, as in the Cleveland article.) DirectorStratton 02:14, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
I removed the Northeast Ohio redirect. Now that we are straightening things out I'm not sure it is worth making a Northeast Ohio article. We should just have articles for Greater Cleveland, Greater Akron, Greater Youngstown, etc. Not that I'm ready to start a Greater Akron (where I live) article, but if we do too many overlapping articles they won't be maintained as well.
Apparently the CMSAs live on as Combined Statistical Areas, but I retain my point from above, that Greater Cleveland and NE Ohio are separate enough to have separate pages. DirectorStratton 20:30, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
Since the CSA is a valid definition of Greater Cleveland, is there any reason not to revert your deletions? - EurekaLott 14:36, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
For starters, the MSA is at least an equally valid definition of Greater Cleveland, if not a better one. DirectorStratton 07:14, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Which one is better is a matter of opinion, but my point is that reasonable people could consider the MSA or the CSA as credible definitions of Greater Cleveland, and so both should be represented in the article. - EurekaLott 16:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Actually, very few people would consider the CMSA as corresponding very closely with Greater Cleveland. It overlaps in many areas, but by and large includes a much more expansive area than most would identify as Greater Cleveland. The CMSA can be mentioned, but it should be clearly indicated that it is a rather poor match for the area commonly identified by residents as Greater Cleveland. older≠wiser 17:45, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be more accurate to use the Census Urban Area[1] ("00" is the index) rather than the Metro Area(s)? This would clear up for the most part the "Cleveland vs. Akron" issue. Mapsax 00:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I like that idea a lot. Is there any precedent for it on Wikipedia? Confiteordeo 01:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The statement in this article concerning the 2000 Census data is inaccurate. The Census considers seven counties (Cuyahoga, Lorain, Medina, Lake, Portage, and Summit) as part of the "Cleveland-Akron Consolidated Metropolitan Area". Recently, there has been some controversy (namely from angry Akron residents) by the Census Bureau's proposals to remove the word 'Akron' from this description and thus effectively classify Akron as a suburb of Cleveland.

[edit] Portage County

I added a list of the cities and towns in Portage County as the county was listed as part of Northeast Ohio, but was not included in the list of cities and towns in the area by county (don't ask me why it wasn't included). I included Rootstown because even though it is still a township, it has it's own post office and is generally referred to as if it were a municipality (it also has it's own school system). Jon Ridinger 22 Feb 2006

[edit] Page name

I moved this page back to its original name, for several reasons. First, Cleveland Metropolitan Area is not an official name. The official names are the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Cleveland-Akron-Elyria Combined Statistical Area, and this article covers both. Second, Greater Cleveland is not a confusing name. It's actually the most common name applied to the area. A simple Google test reveals about 773,000 results for "Greater Cleveland", while "Cleveland Metropolitan Area" only returns about 22,500 results. It's also not an unusual naming page naming convention. See Greater Boston and Greater Houston for just a couple other examples. - EurekaLott 21:25, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, whatever the article is going to be called, in the realm if clarity it registers as somewhat of a mess. Right now, you have several articles (Elyria for instance) which are included in the Greater Cleveland area. Then, in the article on Greater Cleveland, Lorain County is considered part of Northeast Ohio. With any certainty, having spent the first 21 of my 35 years living on the East Side, Lorain county was only something one heard about on the commercials for WUAB Channel 43 "Serving Lorain and Cleveland". The only place I ever encountered CMSA or MSA in connection with Cleveland was at the library while doing research for a paper in high school. What is referred to as Greater Cleveland by those of us who grew up there or currently live there should remain reasonably part of Cleveland. Here in Chicago, the natives living within the 6 county area (pretty much all of entire Northeastern Illinois) as the metro area known as Chicagoland. But there is a huge difference here -- first, we are talking about almost 80% of the entire state's population residing in an area with very little separation between built up areas. It certainly still amounts to a matter of opinion, but the bottom line is this: Northeast Ohio can be anywhere from Youngstown to Ashtabula, Medina, Vermillion, etc, etc. There are areas where there is separation between built up and undeveloped areas within the area in question. I certainly would not consider Vermilion to be part of the Greater Cleveland area, although I realize that the boundaries of population have expanded over the years I have been away. (I have met people here in Chicago that say "Hey, I'm from Cleveland too!" and when I ask them what part, they say "Vermilion"). Again, Lorain-Elyria, although it is considered for statistical purposes to be included, is quite a haul west of where I would refer to as Greater Cleveland. If CMSA's are truly an antiquated idea, then let the article reflect that. Mayfield Heights and Strongsville are part of the Greater Cleveland area. Elyria is part of the Lorain area. I would say that in order to keep it as clear as possible for what we are calling Greater Cleveland, we should, in fact, limit the name to areas that are directly connected to the East Side and West Side of the the City and suburbs. Northeast Ohio, if it warrants one, should be a separate article. Whatever is done, this article needs some serious editing... because right now, you've got Akron and Canton represented here too. Ryecatcher773 01:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas were deprecated in favor of Combined Statistical Areas. For Northeast Ohio, it doesn't amount to much more than a name change. If we're going to follow the OMB definitions, Lorain County is in both the MSA and the CSA. Lorain County's eastern communities (Avon, North Ridgeville, etc.) are probably more of Cleveland's sprawl than a suburb of Lorain or Elyria.
Northeast Ohio does redirect here, but please feel free to start an article there if you wish to split the concepts. It was done once before, but the article was never expanded beyond a single sentence, so I restored the redirect. If you're willing to supply sufficient context, there should be enough material to support both articles. - EurekaLott 02:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
The point that I was making was that the article is called Greater Cleveland. Yes, I will concede that a lot of Cleveland's westward sprawl has filled in that gap between Lorain and Cuyahoga County, particularly in the area that you mention, but the Lorain-Elyria area was and still is (for the purposes of the question "what is Greater Cleveland?") its own distinct metro area. Whatever the case, the article still needs some cleaning up, and I'll get around to it... this little guy I have running around and eating the dirt out of my planters isn't quite giving me too much time to 'Wiki' these days. :-D Ryecatcher773 02:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)