Cincinnati! Dayton! It's a great place to start!

Roads Scholars like me love stories like this, and you will too, provided you're a Roads Scholar and all.

Much cooing has been generated by local economic boosters claiming that Cincinnati and Dayton will merge into one lump metropolitan area because of the results of the 2010 census. Well, now the new official definitions of America's metropolitan areas have been released, and it is not to be: Cincinnati and Dayton remain separate. They're not even in the same combined statistical area (though nobody uses combined statistical areas anyway).

In the new definitions, the Cincinnati metropolitan area actually dropped Franklin County, Indiana - and gained neighboring Union County. So now there's a nice big dent in the official map of the metro. Rules are rules, and Union County apparently now has greater commuter ties to Cincinnati than Franklin County does.

It makes sense, mapfaces. Trust me on that.