A Combined Statistical Area (CSA) is a grouping of adjacent metropolitan and/or micropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States and Puerto Rico. The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines combined statistical areas based on social and economic ties measured by commuting patterns between adjacent MSAs. The areas that combine retain their own designations as metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas within the larger combined statistical area. The primary distinguishing factor between a CSA and an MSA is that the social and economic ties between the individual MSAs within a CSA are at lower levels than between the counties within an MSA.
As of December 2009, there are 128 combined statistical areas in the United States and Puerto Rico. For a complete list of the 125 combined statistical areas of the United States, see the List of United States combined statistical areas.
Famous quotes containing the words combined and/or area:
“Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)