How would you define the PDX area?

Arbitron considers, Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Clark, Marion, and Yamhill counties to be part of PDX area. Also, the US census consider Salem to be part of PDX area. Would you agree the Portland area is from Salem to Woodland, WA and from Forest Grove to Sandy OR? If not, how would you define PDX area?

"How would you define the PDX area?"

I would define the PDX area as all of the land encompassing Portland International Airport.

I Wood say it is more like Woodburn to Woodland.

I would define the PDX area as all of the land encompassing Portland International Airport.

I wood include the airspace between 1K to 5K ft in a 30 mile radius from the PDX control tower.

I have always been interested in this subject. To me, there are two good ways to define metro areas: 1) An area that is, for the most part, built up between cities and towns. (In this case, Salem would not be part of the Portland metro because there is a lot of undeveloped land in between, thanks in part to the urban growth boundary). 2) An area that is generally served by the same media, i.e. tv/radio/newspaper. In this case Salem would be included. However, the standard seems to be the U.S. census and I think they generally do a good job of defining metro areas.

The most official answer is the MSA (formerly SMSA) definition of the metro which is the 4 county area (Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Clark). This is how population estimates are derived for official government use. I don't know where Edawg read that Salem is included. Please show us.

When they are doling out federal dollars to metro areas, that's where our ranking is based.

Radio and TV markets are not limited to the obvious geographics and some of what is considered, e.g., the Nielsen Portland TV market contains areas fed by translators where no other full power TV station has coverage regardless of how far off into the SE Oregon wilderness it may be. The Arbitron map is not as disjointed as the TV map, but can also be misleading. Stations as far south as Marion county may be considered by Arbitron as part of Portland, but in reality they are too far away to be relevant to accuracy, rather they serve sales geeks trying to overblow the market to national buyers that don't know any better.

It gets even more complicated...The census designates MSA's, PMSA's, and CMSA's. Portland-Vancouver is designated as a Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA), and Portland-Salem as a Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA).

The PMSA population is apprx. 2.2 million, the CMSA is apprx. 2.6 million.

Portland's PMSA ranking is #23. And guess what? Its Arbitron radio rank is also #23.

There will be a quiz later.

E-dawg is about right, to my mind. I tend to think of a metro area as all the communities within about an hour's drive (under ideal conditions) from the city center, which usually means 60 miles or so. If there is another major city within that radius, then I include the one-hour radius of that city's center as well. Thus, for example, San Francisco and San Jose are part of the same metro area, but Sacramento is separate. Baltimore and Washington DC are twinned but not Philadelphia. It's not a scientific or government-sanctioned definition, but it seems to work for most practical, everyday applications.

That works most places out here in the west, but in the east it falls apart. Sixty miles from Boston, MA. (SW) and you're in the Hartford, CT. market. Sixty miles further from Hartford and you're in the NYC market. There are many more examples.

Andy raises a point I should perhaps have been more clear about. First, I'm not talking here about broadcast markets, but metro areas in general. Second, the Hartford metro area, while quite large, is too far away from both NYC and Boston to be considered a "twin" of either of those cities as I define it here. The one-hour radius I mean is from city center to city center, not outskirts to outskirts. (I've edited this response somewhat since first posting it.)

I'm sure I'm the only one on this site that will say I personally consider the metro area to be the area within walking distance of a TriMet and/or C-TRAN bus stop.

That's a pretty good definition!

Tri-Met actually goes farther out than what I would describe as the "metro area", Estacada and Canby, for instance. I would consider it to be from the outskirts of Gresham to Forest Grove and from Wilsonville to Woodland WA.

Sandy opted out of Tri-Met, but I'd still put the burg in the metro area (note they essentially run a shuttle to MAX).

I'm with DT's mod of the first post: Woodburn to Woodland, Forest Grove to Sandy. The media market's bigger than what I'd call the metro area (i.e., it includes Salem, which I wouldn't call as inside Portland metro).

Salem's city bus system runs rush hour shuttles to Wilsonville which ties in to Wilsonville's shuttles to TriMet's Barbur Blvd station. Therefore, I think Salem is in the metro area via back door. With WES starting up in Jan, I think Salem's link is more solid.