Definition
The U.S. Census Bureau defines the area as both a MSA consisting of seven Western Pennsylvania counties anchored by the city of Pittsburgh and a twelve county Pittsburgh–New Castle-Weirton CSA with 2 West Virginia counties and one in Ohio. The MSA definition includes the city proper and the Pennsylvania counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland. The CSA definition also adds the two Western Pennsylvania counties of Lawrence and Indiana, West Virginia's Brooke and Hancock as well as Ohio's Jefferson.
The MSA had a 2012 population of 2,360,733 and has a land area of 5,343 sq. miles, while the CSA had a 2012 population of 2,661,369. Pittsburgh is part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis containing an estimated 54 million people, while many residents also consider themselves part of the Mid-Atlantic coastal region of Virginia to New York. It is classified as Northeast by the U.S. Census with the West Virginia and Ohio components of the CSA being classified as South and Mid-west respectively. The entire MSA and CSA are within the Congressional Appalachian Regional Commission's definition of Appalachia.
The area is also sometimes defined as even reaching into southwestern New York State and the extreme western counties of Maryland.
Read more about this topic: Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“It is very hard to give a just definition of love. The most we can say of it is this: that in the soul, it is a desire to rule; in the spirit, it is a sympathy; and in the body, it is but a hidden and subtle desire to possess—after many mysteries—what one loves.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction.... The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyperreal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children’s negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother reads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)