The City-Centric Dataset: Metropolitan Geographic Definitions and Code for US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), 1980-2020

Comparative urban research in the USA has yet to fully grapple with geographic and definitional boundary changes of urban areas across time, resulting in spatial error and bias that severely affects empirical results. In the accompanying paper published in PLOS ONE, we center the urban area as the fundamental unit of analysis—a city-centric approach—to provide robust and dynamic metropolitan definitions that advance comparative urban studies while improving precision and accuracy in urban data analysis across different time scales.

This dataset includes a new spatial dataset, programming code, and metropolitan geographic definitions for the manuscript "Advancing Methods for Comparative Urban Research: A City-Centric Protocol and Longitudinal Dataset for US Metropolitan Statistical Areas" (PLOS ONE). This dataset provides the customized Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) definitions used in our study that make US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) geographies comparable over time, as well as the code to process and create the results and figures in the paper. Our geographic definitions cover the 50 largest US MSAs from 1980-2020.

If you use this dataset or code, please cite as follows: Jurjevich, Jason R., Katie Meehan, Nicholas M.J.W. Chun, and Greg Schrock (2025): "The City-Centric Dataset: Metropolitan Geographic Definitions and Code for US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), 1980-2020." Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Research Data Repository. DOI: 10.25422/azu.data.25743963

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For inquiries regarding the contents of this dataset, please contact the Corresponding Author listed in the README.txt file. Administrative inquiries (e.g., removal requests, trouble downloading, etc.) can be directed to data-management@arizona.edu