The US Census Bureau has something called a Statistical Area: http://www.census.gov/population/www/metroareas/metrodef.html The actual areas are based on county lines (except in New England), but may have more than one "principal city". For example, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area has principal cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and Largo, and the Albany-Lebanon, OR Micropolitan Statistical Area has principal cities of Albany and Lebanon. This gives us two levels of importance for these "principal cities" - those that are part of a Metropolitan Statistical Area and those that are part of a Micropolitan Statistical Area. (Note that a principal city can be a town or even an unincorporated census-designated place.) The main disadvantage I can find is that these are based on population, and may omit historically important places; for example, St. Augustine is within the Jacksonville, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area, but is not a principal city, while the significantly more populous but much newer Palm Coast (to the south) has its own MSA.
If you're interested in the topic, please take a look at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/bulletins/b10-02.pdf (lists starting on pages 29, 64, and (for New England) 141) and see if it roughly matches your idea of what the major cities are in your area. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
