ABSTRACT
The USA has some of the largest urban agglomerations in the world in size of population and indeed also in the extent of the built-up area. Table 9.8 contains data for the ten largest CMSAs in population size in 1991. These top ten in size-out of 278 metropolitan areas altogether-have about 80 million inhabitants, about 40 per cent of the metropolitan total. The data in column (2) show a marked difference in the rates of population change between the five located in the old industrial belt of the country (Areas 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8 in Table 9.8, with 4 marginal) and the remaining five. Marked contrasts also occur in the proportion of Black and Hispanic to total population. As would be expected, the scores of the largest urban agglomerations on the five variables (2)-(6) in Table 9.8 are not at the extremes of the range of values for all metropolitan areas. These are shown in Table 9.9a-e, which contains the highest and lowest scoring MSAs; none of the eighteen CMSAs actually falls at the limits of the range. There follow brief comments on each of the subdivisions (a) to (e) in the table. The reader whose interest has been sufficiently aroused to examine the data more thoroughly can consult either U.S. Metro Data Sheet (1993), produced by the Population Reference Bureau, or the section on metropolitan areas in the Statistical Abstract of the United States (e.g. pp. 37-41 in the 1993 volume).
