As a native “Buckeye” I must say that this is a very fascinating article. Let’s see how these merger talks evolve.

It is interesting to note that Dallas-Fort Worth residents are VERY adamant about their separate identities. Use of these two cities in the same breath can be a death knell for someone visiting locally.

Michael Scott

1. Having two cities close together creates strong development forces between the two. Just the fact that one spouse may work in Cincinnati and the other in Dayton causes some people to move to the center. Then you have the fact that a home between the two has two markets to pull from, rather than one, unlike a home in northern Kentucky. Then retail and jobs follow the people, and also move to the center to take advantage of the dual markets. It really stretches out a Metro, which leads to…
2. The feel of a place is different. In Columbus, as in Indianapolis, Louisville, and other “isolated” cities, you find that you can drive 20 minutes to ½ hour and be more or less out of town. Dayton may be smaller than all of these metros, but if you drive south on I-75, you run into Cinci, and so you get a sense that there’s something else around the corner. You feel a bit less confined to that one place, like you’re part of something bigger. In Columbus, you need to drive a couple of hours to hit another good-sized city. It gives Columbus a bit more of a provincial feel, despite the bigger size.
3. Speaking of provincial, the loyalties of an “isolated” city are clearer than in merged metros, resulting in less confusion in some cases. For example, growing up near New Haven, CT many people commuted to Hartford, New York, Bridgeport and Stamford, all cities that were within a 2 hour drive, and a short train ride in most cases. Well, if you live in a suburb that serves two or even three or four cities, which one are you really “from”? It strikes me how people from Connecticut almost NEVER say “I’m from New Haven” or “I’m from Hartford” when traveling. It’s “I’m from Hamden” (my actual hometown), even if you were 2 feet from the New Haven border. When Columbus area residents travel, they say, “I’m from Columbus” even if they live in Reynoldsburg. People feel more linked to an “isolated” city, because the direct impact of what happens in that city is much clearer. I wager that folks in Columbus suburbs, by and large, would feel more threatened if the city started nose-diving than they did when Hartford started to nose dive.
4. Finally, you get this period where you have this strange melding. It’s sort of like watching two stars colliding in space. It takes a while, but in the end the results are dramatic. However there is this funky middle point where first you are your own stand-alone city, and then you notice changes. Traffic increases. They economic dynamic shifts. The cultures start to merge. And suddenly, you’re looking back 20 years later and realizing just how much things changed. I witnessed this first hand in New Haven, which was being more strongly assimilated into the northeast seaboard megaopolis as I was growing up. Suddenly in the late 80’s or early 90’s, the dynamic just changed. And EVERYONE noticed it and talked about it. I bet that Cincinnati and Dayton are just on the front end of this. It may be less dramatic, because the northeast still has a much higher population density than southern Ohio, but I wager that 20 years hence folks living in that area will be commenting on how different it was 20 years ago.

Considering the distances involved though, I’m not sure how much the metro areas will actually be merged in reality. We’re facing a future of increased scarcity of resources, more expensive fuel and transportation costs, and less generous financial markets. These things hit such completely exurban areas especially hard, and it may simply not be possible for the sprawl to fill in.

Even if the whole I-75 corridor does get built out, I don’t think there’s really much of a perception that this area is even part of Cincinnati or Dayton. Monroe, Middletown, Franklin, and Springboro are far enough between Cincinnati and Dayton that they feel like they’re just places unto themselves.

There’s also a big cultural divide that’s really hard to put a finger on. Dayton has a much more typical midwestern feel than Cincinnati, and despite its problems it feels a lot more progressive in some ways. This is evident in their built environment, with some fun murals as part of their I-75 rebuilding, a lot more “experimental” modern architecture from the 1970s and 80s, and heck, they have trolleybuses! There’s also a sense of order and tidiness, a care towards making the place look a little better, that Cincinnati is sorely lacking compared to a lot of other cities. I think it was here at urbanophile.com where the comment was made that Cincinnati does so little with so much, and Indianapolis does so much with so little. I’d put Dayton in that same category as Indianapolis.

So aside from census designations and advertising PR, I doubt much actual merging would happen, and even if it does it would probably be perceived more as a third area than as some Cincinnati/Dayton metroplex. On the other hand, the passenger rail connection and even the widening of I-75 between the two cities seems like they will better connect Cincinnati and Dayton, even if they remain rather independent.

Jarrett, good insights on the airport. Unfortunately this isn’t likely to happen in this case. Both cities already have airports and Cincinnati’s is actually located to the south, in Kentucky, so is on the wrong side of the city. CVG is dominated by Delta and has the highest fares in the nation, so a lot of people do make the drive to Dayton to fly.

Branding is an interesting point. Could the cities co-brand themselves and even save money by pooling expenses on it? With this, as with everything, the two cities are currently very separate.

Yes, of course we all note the growth along the I-75 corridor, but no one has suggested any sort of political merge. The slim discussions of Dayton/Montgomery County cooperation (let alone mergers) have been met with ho-hum silence.

Boy, do we have that in Pittsburgh. You have some tiny towns that can be pushed around by a Family Dollar store.

Effectively, the dual suburbanization movements of both metropolitan areas are close to meeting in Butler and Warren counties, with Cincinnati seemingly the driving force with the explosive outward development.

And that is one major problem with any proposals for political merger, with any other entity. Currently, Cincinnati’s population seems to be migrating away from the old City core, whether north towards Dayton, south into northern Kentucky or west into southeastern Indiana. Cincinnati politicians have dropped the ball when it comes to redeveloping the core of the City for so long, that their current efforts might be too little, too late. And, what could possibly entice the suburbs, or Dayton for that matter, to want to rejoin with a polity that (for some) they have clearly turned their backs to? For my part, that is the question I would like answered.

Perhaps what matters is the airport. For MSP and DFW (and also Raleigh-Durham, RDU) the key to the brand may be the shared major airport more or less between the two cities. It’s the repetition of the shared airport name, as a part of the regional brand, that causes people nationwide to remember Minneapolis – St. Paul as a pair, and Dallas – Fort Worth, and Raleigh – Durham). If Dallas and Fort Worth had separate airports, like San Francisco and Oakland do, the pairing wouldn’t be a national brand.

Paired-city airport names also keep a city on the national map that might otherwise fall off. Witness “SeaTac”, the local short name for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Tacoma is easily forgotten because it’s much smaller than Seattle, and it’s absent from the IATA code, SEA. But if it were just “Seattle International Airport,” a lot fewer people would ever have heard of Tacoma.