The Source of Metropolitan Growth: The Role of Commuting

Over the past few years, a large number of studies have focused on whether population or employment is critical to the source of metropolitan growth. However, only few attempts have so far been made to additionally consider the suburbanization stage and pattern of commuting, which may both enable us to explore this “chicken–egg” issue a little further. The purpose of this paper is to compare dwelling‐based (housing) with job‐based (job) employment to evaluate the net commuting. The Taipei metropolitan area, for example, now lies at the initial suburbanization stage with only population decentralization and massive in‐commuting to the central city. The estimation results based on a co‐integration system reveal that the central‐city employment can be regarded as an engine of this metropolitan economy. Besides, we also find that dwelling‐based employment distorts the causality between population and employment, especially from the variance‐decomposition accounts. Therefore, the importance of commuting to investigating the evolution of metropolitan economy should not be overlooked.     

Does Commuting Reduce Wage Disparities?

ABSTRACT This paper shows that in the Baltic countries, commuting reduces urban‐rural wage and employment disparities and increases national output. To quantify the effect of commuting on wage differentials, two sets of earnings functions are estimated (based on Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Labor Force Surveys) with location variables (capital city, rural, etc.) measured at the workplace and at the place of residence. We find that the ceteris paribus wage gap between capital city and rural areas, as well as between capital and other cities is significantly narrowed by commuting in some cases but remains almost unchanged in others. Different outcomes are explained by country‐specific spatial patterns of commuting, educational and occupational composition of commuting flows, and presence or absence of wage discrimination against rural residents in urban markets. A treatment effects model is used to estimate individual wage gains to rural—urban or inter‐city commuting; these gains are substantial in most but not all cases. Wage effects of commuting distance, as well as impact of education, gender, ethnicity, and local labor market conditions on the commuting decision are also explored.     

Living in Two Worlds: A Review of Home‐to‐Work Decisions

ABSTRACT This paper discusses various aspects of the economic analysis of commuting behavior. It starts with a review of two difficulties associated with urban economics models: the empirically falsified prediction of the relation between commuting time and income, and the presence of substantial excess commuting. Notwithstanding these anomalies, research that focuses directly on the value of travel time provides evidence that there is substantial resistance against commuting among large groups of workers. However, commuting costs are just one among many other explanatory variables for actual commuting behavior, and commuting itself has become much less onerous over time. This suggests that commuting costs play a much more limited role than has been assumed in the past. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that space is more important than one would be inclined to think on the basis of the considerations just given. These empirical regularities suggest that other space‐related aspects of the functioning of urban labor and housing markets are more important than was previously thought.     

Long-distance commuting and population change in Georgia, 1960-80

The authors investigate counter-urbanization and population change in Georgia between 1960 and 1980 by examining commuting patterns. "The immediate objective is to construct the entire set of commuting fields of both large metropolitan areas to metropolitan and nonmetropolitan employment centers. We then proceed to the relationship between commuting from nonmetropolitan areas to all levels of Georgia's urban hierarchy and population change in these nonmetropolitan settings. By matching population growth and decline areas with explicit employment ties...the nature of the population changes is much better understood." Data from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 censuses for 581 Census County Divisions (CCDs) in Georgia are analyzed. It is concluded that "most nonmetropolitan growth taking place in Georgia is associated with intensification of metropolitan commuting fields along with growth of nonmetropolitan centers and their influence along the very periphery of metropolitan spheres of employment influence. However, a significant share of Georgia's nonmetropolitan population revitalization is explained by growth independent of direct metropolitan influence. It would appear then that nonmetropolitan growth centers are an important part of the basis for population decentralization in Georgia. Metropolitan spill-over alone cannot account for counterurbanization on this portion of the American economic landscape."     

Quality of Life and the Migration of the College‐Educated: A Life‐Course Approach

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the college‐educated population—segmented into selective demographic groups, from young adults to the elderly—differentially values quality‐of‐life (QOL) indicators of metropolitan areas in the United States. Using data from the 2000 Census and the 1997 Places Rated Almanac, out‐migration patterns are shown to depend jointly upon stage in the life course, the spatial‐demographic setting, and QOL characteristics. An abundance of cultural and recreational amenities lowers out‐migration rates of young college‐educated. For the older college‐educated population, the revealed preferences shift toward concerns for safety and a strong preference for milder climates. The study also finds significantly lower out‐migration rates for metropolitan areas with growing human capital. In light of shifting age distributions and rising educational attainment levels, the results have important implications for the emergence of new migration patterns and the concentration of human capital.     

Unemployment Duration in Non‐Metropolitan Labor Markets

Non‐metropolitan areas of the U.S have experienced significant structural economic changes in recent decades. These changes have raised concerns that some non‐metropolitan workers may face significant costs to employment displacements associated with economic adjustments. This paper explores the roles that linkages to metropolitan labor markets, area labor market conditions, and individual attributes play in determining the rates of exit from unemployment to employment among non‐metropolitan area residents. Adjacency to a metropolitan area is found to significantly increase transition rates from unemployment to employment among displaced non‐metropolitan workers, but local economic conditions are found to have relatively weak or insignificant effects on transition rates. Also, lack of post‐high school education and minority status both significantly reduce rates of exit from unemployment in non‐metropolitan areas following employmentdisplacement.     

How does tolerance affect urban innovative capacities in China?

This study investigated how urban cultural and economic tolerance affects urban innovative capacities based on China's prefecture‐level cities. Several tolerance indices, including ratios of migrants, rental housing, gay people, and private economies were introduced and the cities’ tolerance scores were measured using factor analysis. The results show that cities with higher cultural and economical tolerant scores were agglomerated in three metropolitan areas in China's southeastern coastal region. The spatial regression model demonstrates that urban cultural and economic tolerance increases urban innovation output and promotes innovation capacities. We also introduced the crime rate as an instrumental variable and found that the effect of tolerance on innovation remains robust. Our study suggests it is important for the Chinese government to establish an open and tolerant environment to attract migrants, creative artists, and entrepreneurs to foster urban vitality and improve urban innovative capacities.     

Who leads regional industrial dynamics? “New industry creators” in Chinese regions

Recent evolutionary economic geography studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path‐dependent process, as regions often branch into industries that are related to its industrial structure. However, it is less clear who are creating new industries and under what regional conditions. This research seeks to fill this gap and identify “new industry creators” in regional industrial diversification. We differentiate two types of new industry formation—path‐breaking and path‐dependent—and examine whether some new industry creators are more path‐breaking than others, by incorporating two factors that have been largely overlooked in recent literature on technological relatedness—firm heterogeneity and regional institutions. Based on a firm‐level data set of China’s manufacturing industries, this paper shows that path‐breaking and path‐dependence coexist. Empirical results confirm that firm heterogeneity and regional institutions not only affect the firms’ capabilities in creating new industries, but also encourage/discourage firms to be adventurous and path‐breaking. This research implies that lagging regions can catch up with developed regions by coordinating regional resources and adjusting local institutional arrangements to attract more path‐breaking firms.     

Trade Reorientation and Its Effects on Regional Port Systems: The Korea‐China Link along the Yellow Sea Rim

ABSTRACT Owing to its competitive labor costs, its open‐market policy, and a substantial amount of capital investments, China has become a global manufacturing pole and an export‐based economy replicating the conventional Asian model but on a much wider scale. This is creating acute competition on other Asian export‐based economies such as Korea that have to adapt to the “China effect.” Consequently, many Korean manufacturing companies have repositioned their capital and equipment in China to enlarge their market potential as well as to reduce their production costs. Because Korea is adjacent to China—both are sharing the Yellow Sea Rim—this shift is creating a unique geographical dimension with a high level of functional integration of Sino‐Korean manufacturing supply chains. This transition has also brought substantial changes in the regional logistic network by organizing new flows of raw materials, parts, and final products, most of them along the Yellow Sea Rim. New logistic flows have given substantial influences on regional port competition by creating diverse links. These changes are bringing a reorientation of the regional maritime industry and of the port system.     

Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Southeastern United States: Urban and Rural Variation

The capabilities of central office (CO) telephone switches in four southeastern states (Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee) provide detail on spatial variation in telecommunications technologies. A proposed six‐level hierarchy of switch capability was used. Switches with digital capability are concentrated disproportionately in metropolitan areas, largely in response to larger numbers of business establishments. The overall picture in the Southeast is one of tremendous variation—variation across states and variation within the four states being studied. Rural (nonmetro) counties generally, but not always, have both fewer switches overall and fewer switches with digital capability. North Carolina and Tennessee, the two most urban of the four states, also have seen the greatest entry by new telecommunications competitors. These two states have the largest percentages of advanced (digital) switches in both metro and rural counties. At the county level, the number of switches is primarily a function of a county's population but, even more significantly in three states, of the number of business establishments in the county. On the whole, it is residents of metropolitan—not rural—areas who are most likely to be served by newer forms of digital telecommunications.     

The Creative Economies of Texas Metropolitan Regions: A Comparative Analysis Before,During, and After the Recession

With the exception of Austin, metropolitan regions in Texas are not commonly included in research and analysis concerning creative economies—attention is largely focused on either the traditional capitals of creative production, New York and Los Angeles, or emerging, secondary regions such as Austin and Seattle, Washington. This article utilizes an industrial approach to examine the creative economies of the four most populous metropolitan regions of Texas—Austin, Dallas‐Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio—and detail their scale, scope, and change between 2005 and 2015. Results help establish the creative economies of the Dallas‐Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio metropolitan regions in the existing stream of creative research and discussion, offer further perspective on the dynamics and strength of the Austin region's creative economy, and provide insight into how regional creative economies emerge in rapidly urbanizing regions during the digital era. Additionally, special attention is paid to how these four creative economies transformed during the recessionary period from 2007 to 2009. Results of that attention build on prior research which points to the recession having a varied influence on creative economies depending on trends in the broader regional economies that house them.     

The role of job uncertainty in inter‐regional commuting: The case of Italy

This paper studies the evolution of the determinants of inter‐regional commuting in Italy in the period 1992–2016, during which the labour market has been significantly reformed. To capture the changes in commuting patterns, the analysis of the role of individual, job, firm, and regional characteristics is performed. Specifically, the focus is on the impact of job uncertainty at both micro and macro level, through the analysis of the way the diffusion of temporary contracts has affected the decision to commute for work. The findings suggest that in more recent years workers hired on a temporary contract are more likely to commute to another region. Moreover, the higher the relative share of temporary contracts in the region of residence, the higher the probability of commuting across regions. These findings support the idea that the strong utilisation of (short) temporary contracts represents a push factor, which drives workers away in search of better job opportunities, with potentially negative consequences for poorly performing regions.     

Density and the journey to work

"This paper evaluates the influence of residential density on commuting behavior across U.S. cities while controlling for available opportunities, the technology of transportation infrastructure, and individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The measures of metropolitan and local density are addressed separately.... Regressions are conducted to predict commuting time, speed, and distance, by mode of travel on a cross-section of individuals nationally and city by city. The results indicate that residential density in the area around the tripmaker's home is an important factor: the higher the density the lower the speed and the shorter the distance.... The paper suggests a threshold density at which the decrease in distance is overtaken by the congestion effects resulting in a residential density between 7,500 and 10,000 persons per square mile (neither the highest nor lowest) with the shortest duration auto commutes."     

Search Theory and Commuting Behavior

ABSTRACT This paper argues that search theory is a useful addition to the way economists and geographers have approached the study of commuting behavior. This is illustrated by showing that introduction of a spatial element into the standard model of job search leads to the prediction of critical isochrones. Moreover, in the context of an urban economy with decentralized employment, the spatial search model predicts excess commuting. Search theory also suggests that regression toward the mean may play a confusing role in data describing the development of commutes over time, such as has been used in recent empirical work. Finally, the paper develops a simple spatial equilibrium search model in which employers set their wages optimally and searchers determine their reservation wages optimally in mutually consistent ways. The spatial element is crucial for the existence of such an equilibrium in which reservation wages of all searchers and wages set by all employers are identical.     

A Micro‐Simulation Approach to Modelling Spatial Unemployment Disparities

This paper aims to construct a comprehensive model capable of simulating spatial unemployment disparities. The key feature of the model is that it simultaneously deals with commuting and migration. Much of the existing literature simply models one adjustment mechanism at a time. This paper adopts a micro‐simulation approach to build a model which can deal with equilibrium and disequilibrium unemployment disparities in a context where commuting and migration are possible. The model is then used to demonstrate the importance of considering both types of flows and to guide future empirical and theoretical work in the area.     

U.S. Commuting Networks and Economic Growth: Measurement and Implications for Spatial Policy

Labor market areas (LMAs) have long been a staple of regional and urban analysis. As commuting patterns have expanded over time, these areas have become larger and more complex, and the dichotomous designation of a county either belonging to an LMA or not may no longer be adequate. We apply recent advances in network science to conduct a more refined analysis of U.S. commuting patterns, and examine their effects on local economic growth. Results show that network degree and entropy measures explain variations in county per capita income growth patterns. Higher in‐ and out‐commuting entropies are associated with lower per capita income growth, but their interaction enhances economic growth in places simultaneously open to both in‐ and out‐commuters. Using these results, common ground may be found for creating new forms of regional governance that better reflect local realities of cross‐county border flows of workers and economic activity.     

Recent intra-metropolitan patterns of spatial mismatch: Implications for black suburbanization and the changing geography of mismatch

Kain's spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) (1968) highlights the segregation of Black population in the inner city as well as the decentralization of jobs, both of which played a role in the poor labor market outcomes for Black residents in the inner city. Demographic and economic changes in U.S. metropolitan areas since the late 20th century have transformed the urban spatial structure. This paper aims to revisit the SMH and investigate whether the spatial pattern of mismatch has changed as a result of geographic shifts in the Black population. This paper specifically examines how the suburbanization of the Black population has affected the geographic patterns of mismatch and whether the mismatch is disappearing in the major U.S. metropolitan areas. Using spatial measures of mismatch, this paper presents intra-metropolitan spatial mismatch patterns that capture the clustering of jobs and the Black population based on their relative distributions, showing that the overall level of spatial mismatch declined in major U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2015. However, geographical evidence reveals that the spatial mismatch has shifted to the outer suburbs, replicating city-suburb spatial inequality, implying that although mismatch may have declined in the inner city due to Black suburbanization, spatial mismatch continue to persist in U.S. metropolitan areas in Black suburbs. The findings also demonstrate that although spatial mismatch generally declined in the inner city, it increased in cities with high inner city polarization, particularly New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.     

Change in the Concentration of Employment in Computer Services: Spatial Estimation at the U.S. Metro County Level

ABSTRACT This article models the concentration of computer services activity across the U.S. with factors that incorporate spatial relationships. Specifically, we enhance the standard home‐area study with an analysis that allows conditions in neighboring counties to affect the concentration of employment in the home county. We use county‐level data for metropolitan areas between 1990 and 1997. To measure change in employment concentration, we use the change in location quotients for SIC 737, which captures employment concentration changes caused by both the number of firms and the scale of their activity relative to the national average. After controlling for local demand for computer services, our results support the importance of the presence of a qualified labor supply, interindustry linkages, proximity to a major airport, and spatial processes in explaining changes in computer services employment concentration, finding little support for the influence of cost factors. Our enhanced model reveals interjurisdictional relationships among these metro counties that could not be captured with standard estimates by state, metropolitan statistical area (MSA), or county. Using counties within MSAs, therefore, provides more general results than case studies but still allows measurement of local interactions.     

The Growing Economic Specialization of Cities: Disentangling Industrial and Functional Dimensions in the Canadian Urban System, 1971–2006

Decreasing spatial transaction and trade costs have given rise to growing economic specialization of cities. While most studies focus on industries as the primary manifestation of urban specialization, a growing body of literature examines occupational functions, i.e., activities and tasks performed within a given industry or firm. This paper explores how the two dimensions (industries and functions) interact across the urban system and their relative importance over time. Is there a trend toward increasing functional specialization in the Canadian urban system? How much of this phenomenon is attributable to spatial shifts in regional industrial structures as opposed to spatial divisions within industries? The paper uses a unique data set drawn from Statistics Canada Census microdata files between 1971 and 2006. Based on the employed population, the data are spatially organized and cross‐tabulated over industries and occupational groups. A decomposition methodology is used to compare the relative weights of industry and regional (functional) effects in accounting for the changing spatial division of functions across Canadian urban areas. Clear patterns of increasing functional specialization are found within the Canadian urban system. Regional effects are generally greater than industry effects, suggesting that spatial divisions of functions (spatial shifts within industries) are progressing more rapidly than regional shifts in industrial structure.