I grew up in Springfield and went to college at OSU. I’ve been mystified for 35 years why Springfield doesn’t link Dayton/Cincinnati and Columbus. It’s obvious to anyone who knows how to read a map (which, alas, isn’t many people in Springfield). We got TV from both markets, and even when I was in elementary school, I realized Columbus was the future. But I’d bet the median Springfielder doesn’t visit Columbus even once in a year. To their credit, the civic leaders do seem to be pursuing this strategy; it’s just that nobody is playing along. I think a big part is that Columbus remains a fairly cheap city. Springfield’s property values are a lot lower (although that’s changing a bit because of the Haitians), but suburban/exurban Columbus is still affordable for a lot of people, so they’re not moving further west to save money yet. Meanwhile, the Air Force base is a big driver of Dayton’s economy, and thanks to its location, it’s closer to Springfield than it is to much of actual Dayton. Some parts of Springfield are only ten miles from the base. And there are two big malls near the base, where Springfielders shop now that our mall closed. (That’s probably why our mall closed, to be honest.) so we’re pretty tightly linked to Dayton, but still shockingly loosely to Columbus.
I would think the racial makeup of these places would be a salient point. Pontiac is 47% black, and 22% Latino. Anderson, Indiana is overwhelmingly white, by contrast (though has a decent sized black minority).
Pontiac is also located in one of America's premier wealthy counties. (Waukegan in Lake County, IL is similar). Whereas Anderson and Kokomo are the hubs of counties that were always middle class at best.
When you have heavily minority cities surrounded by affluent white/Asian areas, it's a recipe for your insulated/isolated dynamic. Connecticut cities are the perfect example of this. Bridgeport is only 16% white, for example, and is a stark contrast with the surrounding areas. Next door Fairfield is 91% white, for example.
I've long noted that Indy is ringed by small industrial cities, mostly outside of its MSA. This boots its catchment area for certain things (like TV market size) but these places mostly still conceive of themselves autonomously.
Anderson is an interesting case. Long a shrinking industrial GM factory town in a shrinking county, the Anderson area is getting activated by Indy sprawl. Pendleton (a small town which is the affluent "suburb" of Anderson and is physically contiguous to it) is really booming. Anderson itself has added over 1,000 people, almost 2%, just since 2020. I don't think there have been an major annexations that could account for this.
I don't see satellite cities being so rare in the east if you're willing to accept some fudging of Criterion #1 comparable to what you did with Criterion #3 for a few of the cities you listed. Stamford, CT comes to mind and can even be considered to offer "outstanding cost of living affordability" when the comparison is to Upper East Side Manhattan.
Good point. I don't think satellite cities are rare in the east, just that they've been absorbed and just considered part of the East Coast megalopolis. I agree with your point that Stamford (and Bridgeport) could be included. They would fit without fudging the criteria. But it gets harder to think about a city like Newark, a city nearly as old as NYC yet grew independently of it and just 15 miles west of Manhattan, as a satellite city.
My GI Generation parents grew up on Indiana farms and moved to satellite cities (Muncie, Lafayette, Saginaw (?), Kokomo. My brother and I grew up in those satellite cities and as adults ended up in metro areas (Grand Rapids/SF Bay Area, Boston). My daughter went to a larger metro area for school and then stayed (Chicago). This may all just be continued urbanization.
The defining factor for me for satellite cities is that they rely on a metro area for local television. Muskegon had Grand Rapids tv and Kokomo had Indianapolis (and then Chicago with early cable in the 70s). Lafayette had its own station but mostly we watched Indy stations.
For the Bay Area, I thought possible satellite cities as Santa Cruz, Modesto, Stockton, and San Rafael. But none of those met the 50000 by 1960 criteria. Maybe a later threshold for more recently developed states?
I plugged the criteria into ChatGPT for California and it suggested Vallejo and Oxnard. Vallejo, like Stockton, has big problems, maybe similar to satellite cities in the Midwest.
I like this discussion. My Land Bank work in Michigan provides an opportunity to think about older industrial cities. This work also gets me around the Midwest to feel your other examples. Indiana feels less enmeshed in the discussion.
Pontiac, as a county seat surrounded by wealth is one to keep an eye on. It is emerging into better strength. The population loss is another variable worth reviewing. Some of these communities have experiences one-third, one-half or even two-thirds population loss. One-third, because of household size is easy.
During the read, the transit and mobility connections between these communities and the challenges and opportunities that would present was on my mind.
Building on your astronomical analogy and reference to the “gravitational pull” of the larger city, it should be acknowledged that larger cities can have larger satellites at greater distances. I view Milwaukee in some respects as a large satellite of Chicago (and even wrote a blog post about this a decade or so ago on the Urbanophile website). The role that satellites serve for the larger city is complex and dependent on a lot of factors including the degree to which housing prices are unaffordable in the larger city, the quality of highway and mass transit opportunities, etc.).
This is a great discussion. Columbus has a couple of satellite cities, but they are a factor smaller of those of the other cities in the region. Newark (to the east), Delaware (to the north), and Marion (further north). There has been a fair bit of discussion of Springfield's inability to take advantage of its position in the urban system, but it is clearly more closely tied to Dayton (Wright-Patterson AFB secured Dayton's east and south as the direction of growth).
The National Advanced Manufacturing Hub, America Makes, was placed in Youngstown precisely because the Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor would have even access to it.
Kenosha is an interesting case because a solid argument could be made that it's more of a Milwaukee satellite than a Chicago one.
I know the Census Bureau places Kenosha in the Chicago CSA based on commuter percentages, but based on distance, Kenosha is considerably closer to downtown Milwaukee (30 miles) than it is to downtown Chicago (50 miles).
Separately, I wonder what affect, if any, the dual city nature of the twin cities might have had on its lack of development of any satellite cities.
I grew up in Springfield and went to college at OSU. I’ve been mystified for 35 years why Springfield doesn’t link Dayton/Cincinnati and Columbus. It’s obvious to anyone who knows how to read a map (which, alas, isn’t many people in Springfield). We got TV from both markets, and even when I was in elementary school, I realized Columbus was the future. But I’d bet the median Springfielder doesn’t visit Columbus even once in a year. To their credit, the civic leaders do seem to be pursuing this strategy; it’s just that nobody is playing along. I think a big part is that Columbus remains a fairly cheap city. Springfield’s property values are a lot lower (although that’s changing a bit because of the Haitians), but suburban/exurban Columbus is still affordable for a lot of people, so they’re not moving further west to save money yet. Meanwhile, the Air Force base is a big driver of Dayton’s economy, and thanks to its location, it’s closer to Springfield than it is to much of actual Dayton. Some parts of Springfield are only ten miles from the base. And there are two big malls near the base, where Springfielders shop now that our mall closed. (That’s probably why our mall closed, to be honest.) so we’re pretty tightly linked to Dayton, but still shockingly loosely to Columbus.
I would think the racial makeup of these places would be a salient point. Pontiac is 47% black, and 22% Latino. Anderson, Indiana is overwhelmingly white, by contrast (though has a decent sized black minority).
Pontiac is also located in one of America's premier wealthy counties. (Waukegan in Lake County, IL is similar). Whereas Anderson and Kokomo are the hubs of counties that were always middle class at best.
When you have heavily minority cities surrounded by affluent white/Asian areas, it's a recipe for your insulated/isolated dynamic. Connecticut cities are the perfect example of this. Bridgeport is only 16% white, for example, and is a stark contrast with the surrounding areas. Next door Fairfield is 91% white, for example.
I like this analysis.
I've long noted that Indy is ringed by small industrial cities, mostly outside of its MSA. This boots its catchment area for certain things (like TV market size) but these places mostly still conceive of themselves autonomously.
Anderson is an interesting case. Long a shrinking industrial GM factory town in a shrinking county, the Anderson area is getting activated by Indy sprawl. Pendleton (a small town which is the affluent "suburb" of Anderson and is physically contiguous to it) is really booming. Anderson itself has added over 1,000 people, almost 2%, just since 2020. I don't think there have been an major annexations that could account for this.
I don't see satellite cities being so rare in the east if you're willing to accept some fudging of Criterion #1 comparable to what you did with Criterion #3 for a few of the cities you listed. Stamford, CT comes to mind and can even be considered to offer "outstanding cost of living affordability" when the comparison is to Upper East Side Manhattan.
Good point. I don't think satellite cities are rare in the east, just that they've been absorbed and just considered part of the East Coast megalopolis. I agree with your point that Stamford (and Bridgeport) could be included. They would fit without fudging the criteria. But it gets harder to think about a city like Newark, a city nearly as old as NYC yet grew independently of it and just 15 miles west of Manhattan, as a satellite city.
My GI Generation parents grew up on Indiana farms and moved to satellite cities (Muncie, Lafayette, Saginaw (?), Kokomo. My brother and I grew up in those satellite cities and as adults ended up in metro areas (Grand Rapids/SF Bay Area, Boston). My daughter went to a larger metro area for school and then stayed (Chicago). This may all just be continued urbanization.
The defining factor for me for satellite cities is that they rely on a metro area for local television. Muskegon had Grand Rapids tv and Kokomo had Indianapolis (and then Chicago with early cable in the 70s). Lafayette had its own station but mostly we watched Indy stations.
For the Bay Area, I thought possible satellite cities as Santa Cruz, Modesto, Stockton, and San Rafael. But none of those met the 50000 by 1960 criteria. Maybe a later threshold for more recently developed states?
I plugged the criteria into ChatGPT for California and it suggested Vallejo and Oxnard. Vallejo, like Stockton, has big problems, maybe similar to satellite cities in the Midwest.
I like this discussion. My Land Bank work in Michigan provides an opportunity to think about older industrial cities. This work also gets me around the Midwest to feel your other examples. Indiana feels less enmeshed in the discussion.
Pontiac, as a county seat surrounded by wealth is one to keep an eye on. It is emerging into better strength. The population loss is another variable worth reviewing. Some of these communities have experiences one-third, one-half or even two-thirds population loss. One-third, because of household size is easy.
During the read, the transit and mobility connections between these communities and the challenges and opportunities that would present was on my mind.
Building on your astronomical analogy and reference to the “gravitational pull” of the larger city, it should be acknowledged that larger cities can have larger satellites at greater distances. I view Milwaukee in some respects as a large satellite of Chicago (and even wrote a blog post about this a decade or so ago on the Urbanophile website). The role that satellites serve for the larger city is complex and dependent on a lot of factors including the degree to which housing prices are unaffordable in the larger city, the quality of highway and mass transit opportunities, etc.).
This is a great discussion. Columbus has a couple of satellite cities, but they are a factor smaller of those of the other cities in the region. Newark (to the east), Delaware (to the north), and Marion (further north). There has been a fair bit of discussion of Springfield's inability to take advantage of its position in the urban system, but it is clearly more closely tied to Dayton (Wright-Patterson AFB secured Dayton's east and south as the direction of growth).
Interesting how the college towns are all "emerging". Seems their strong economies help to give some leverage visa vi the main cities.
The National Advanced Manufacturing Hub, America Makes, was placed in Youngstown precisely because the Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor would have even access to it.
Kenosha is an interesting case because a solid argument could be made that it's more of a Milwaukee satellite than a Chicago one.
I know the Census Bureau places Kenosha in the Chicago CSA based on commuter percentages, but based on distance, Kenosha is considerably closer to downtown Milwaukee (30 miles) than it is to downtown Chicago (50 miles).
Separately, I wonder what affect, if any, the dual city nature of the twin cities might have had on its lack of development of any satellite cities.