Suburbs Keep Their Census Identity

"The White House budget office has struck a final blow against a hotly debated proposal to group some cities together as "megapolitan areas" when releasing census information. That means smaller urban areas in the shadow of big cities will retain their separate identities when results of the 2000 Census are broken down into metropolitan areas. The original proposal to create a "megapolitan" classification was strongly opposed by officials in New Jersey, which would have been largely swallowed up by New York City and Philadelphia, and in Massachusetts suburbs that would have been consumed by Boston.