Defining the boundaries that separate metropolitan areas has major implications for research, governance, and economic development. For instance, such boundaries can influence allocation of infrastructure funding or housing subsidies. However, traditional methods to define metropolitan regions often hamper meaningful understanding of communities' characteristics and needs.
Drawing on methodologies from network science, He and colleagues have now developed a new method of defining metropolitan areas according to census commuter data. They organized all 3,091 counties in the contiguous United States into an interconnected network, with the number of commuters who cross county lines determining the strength of connections between counties. Notably, unlike other studies that have used commuter data to define metropolitan regions, they also accounted for within-county commuting.
Portland, Oregon has created a regional planning authority, Metro, similar to this approach.
Journal Reference:
Mark He, et al. Demarcating geographic regions using community detection in commuting networks with significant self-loops, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230941
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @06:59PM
It's a geographic study of the distance between home and work.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @07:23PM (2 children)
Isn't LA county the biggest county in the US? Bigger than some small states? Let me check on that . . . I err, LA county ranks #74, with 4,752 square miles. Still, that's a state sized county. Some of those other large counties? Well, San Bernardino, at number one (20,105 sq mi), then places like Coconino County in Arizona. It's a long, long way from Coconino to - uhhh - ANYWHERE. One does not commute for six hours to get to work.
Oh, wow - bit of trivia. I'm familiar with Aroostook County in Maine, but had no idea that it ranked up so high in size - #31.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday May 01 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)
tl;dr: places that are a long way from other places tend to have people stay there
maybe the useful part of the data will be discovering the commuter distance threshold - how far is too far to commute to work?
there are people in Ipswich, UK [wikipedia.org] who have never been further from home than the A14 [google.com]
An hour is considered bad in much of the UK, but half an hour is considered bad in alot of the US.
In large cities in Australia, commuting can take over an hour each way, or even more.. [caradvice.com.au]
Also, how many people can just move to a different city or state for work?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday May 03 2020, @08:19AM
That depends how desperate a person is. When I was young, I had a boss that commuted 75 minutes each way to work. I promised myself to never do anything so foolish. Fast forward a number of years later, and I was doing 90 minutes each way when traffic was light. I had to put food on the table.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @08:00PM
If I understand correctly, according to this I grew up in the "I-95 Corridor" metro area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:07AM (1 child)
Commuter data
Is this what they're calling the spy data from our phones?
Is it too much to ask that researches be honest about their collusion with proto Gestapos?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:12PM
Could also be those insurance company dongles that plug into the OBD-II diagnostic port under the steering wheel.
I pulled up behind a car at a light with this bumper sticker, "Speed monitored by GPS". Wrong car to get behind, it was strictly following the limit on a major road where traffic goes 5-10 mph above the limit.