By Doug Martinson

Editor’s note: This column appeared recently in the Huntsville Real-Time News . I thought people in Birmingham might be interested in what leaders in Huntsville are saying  about their city and ours.

I recently went to a wedding in Greenville, SC, which is a very well planned and beautiful city and one that Huntsville leaders went to years ago to get ideas of how to make Huntsville a better place.

Greenville has a vibrant downtown with hotels, shops, restaurants (including a one star Michelin restaurant), walking and bike trails. It also has a great art and sports scenes, having recently hosted an NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, they have a baseball park modeled after Boston’s Fenway Park for their High A baseball team and an Arts Center that hosts top musical acts, plays and other art events.

But it surprised me, and I am sure it will surprise our readers, that the population of Greenville is only 70,720 people. Huntsville flew past 230,000 people halfway through 2024, according to the most recent official Census count.

However, the Greenville Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), like Birmingham, has over 1 million people. But Birmingham city has just under 200,000 people now. That number declined in the last Census, despite the fact that Birmingham has a lot of the same attributes as Greenville (great restaurants, arts and culture, walking paths like Rotary Park, a downtown baseball stadium, a nice arena and amphitheater which attract top acts.)

After the recent Census updates, there have been several articles in AL.com on population changes and growth (or lack thereof) in the various Alabama counties and metros. (New city and town estimates haven’t come out yet.)

And a lot of the analysis has to do with the MSA populations of Birmingham and Huntsville, as several arguments have been made that while Huntsville is the largest city in Alabama, Birmingham has the largest MSA.

All the talk got me to thinking, what is the MSA and why is it so important? The MSA is defined as a geographic entity based on a county or a group of counties with at least one urbanized center with a population of at least 50,000 and adjacent counties with economic ties to the central area.

The federal Office of Management and Budget sets the geographic area for the MSAs When deciding economic ties and which counties to include, they look at the percentage of folks who commute into the city center each day for work.

The MSA population is then used by businesses in making investment decisions, looking at housing and population trends to see which areas are growing to find investment opportunities. It is also used by businesses and government to allocate resources for education, transportation and health care to ensure services are distributed effectively across urban and suburban areas. I became interested in looking at what constitutes the MSA of Huntsville and Birmingham and there are some striking differences. For one, the MSA of Huntsville contains 1,317 square miles while Birmingham’s MSA contains 4,566 square miles.

Huntsville’s MSA consists of just two counties, Madison and Limestone.

Birmingham’s MSA is spread over seven counties: Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby and Walker Counties. Birmingham’s metro is filled with dozens of cities and towns. Huntsville is just Huntsville, Madison, Athens and a handful of smaller towns.

There are a total of 387 MSA’s in the United States and the following cities are listed in Alabama are listed in the MSA’s with Birmingham being the largest ranking 48^th followed by Huntsville at 107th with the population in parenthesis:

• Birmingham (1,197,766)
• Huntsville (556,444)
• Mobile (411,658)
• Montgomery (388,747)
• Tuscaloosa (281,850)
• Auburn-Opelika (208,013)
• Decatur (160,326)
• Florence-Muscle Shoals (156,609)
• Anniston-Oxford (115,884)

The big question is what does all this mean, if anything?

I think that we have great cities with different attributes. As a Huntsvillian, I am partial to my hometown and proud of our many accomplishments and the leadership and growth of the City. I am not one to say, I wish it was smaller or that I wish it was like it was when I was growing up here. I went to the same high school my father went to and it was a 30-year-old building when I went there and I am glad that our sons went to a relatively new Huntsville High.

Also, the burgeoning restaurant and bar scene here helped bring them and many of their friends to live here.

Birmingham has had its ups and downs. Back in the 1960’s, their politics and leaders caused a lot of businesses decide on Atlanta and other cities. But when I got out of college and law school, everyone wanted to go to Birmingham. It was a vibrant city with great restaurants, neighborhood bars, concerts, sporting events (Legion Field was still in use and they had a professional hockey team) and a large concentration of young people who were very involved in the community. After a lot of corporate and bank mergers, there were a lot of headquarters that moved out of state. Now, Birmingham has come back with Regions Park, The Rotary Trail and so many good restaurants that it is very hard to decide where to go. With the U.S. Coast Guard purchasing the former Birmingham Southern College campus, it will revive that neighborhood and be a catalyst for the city. It is a great win for Birmingham and the former college that is near and dear to so many people in Alabama.

As for Huntsville, we have truly been on a rocket ship of growth since the end of the Apollo missions, and we have been able to diversify our industry to Genetics (Hudson Alpha), automotive (Chrysler, Mazda/Toyota, Toyota), OEM (SCI), software and hardware (Adtran, Intergraph), government (space, defense, missiles, FBI, ATF) and so many other industries. In the 1990’s, I used to think who are all these $200,000 homes….but we keep growing and I think our future is bright and we are getting a lot of Birmingham law firms and even some of their restaurants. I think with the leadership we have, we will continue to grow.

As for Greenville, thanks for leading the way and making some tough decisions and spending money on some projects that a lot of locals criticized, but that have really paid off. It is my hope that other cities in Alabama will follow your example and model and make their cities great places to live.

Doug Martinson is an attorney at Martinson and Beason , which was founded by his grandfather in 1937 and is a fourth generation Huntsvillian. He has served as President of the Huntsville City School Board, the Huntsville Rotary Club, the Huntsville Madison County Bar Association, Chair of the Huntsville Madison County Public Library Board, is a Commissioner of the Alabama State Bar,  and numerous non-profit boards. He also was an NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Official until 2016.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown.  He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com