Information circulation and availability have always been fundamental to the development of cities even when their employment base depended on manufacturing. With the rise of the informational city, and the global economy, the creation and exchange of highly specialized information has become vital for a metropolitan center's success. This paper, accordingly, examines the contemporary production and exchange of higher‐order information that occurs among and between American cities and reveals how ongoing globalization has affected the position of these cities in the system of information exchange. The paper introduces a conceptual framework combining processes of uncertainty, deregulation, globalization, demassification, and vertical disintegration and deploys that framework in an empirical analysis. An analysis of 1990 flow data provided by Federal Express Corporation measures flows among 47 major U.S. centers and selected foreign places and reveals a three‐tiered hierarchical system, with New York at the top. Domestic information flows are modelled using a competing‐destinations model. The role of population size is paramount and the distance parameter is relatively weak. Centers whose domestic information flows are underestimated by the competing‐destinations model, e.g., New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Dallas, had large absolute volumes of international exports, whereas centers that are overpredicted had lower volumes, e.g., Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Rochester. Using the expansion method, the distance exponent associated with domestic flows of information is found to vary with the level of international information movement in a positive and significant fashion. Command‐and‐control and related producer services have continued to concentrate in select cities throughout the 1980s and to strengthen the hierarchical structure based on information flows. The largest volume of international flows is destined for Europe (Brussels and London), Canada, and Asia (Hong Kong and Tokyo), with New York accounting for 36 percent of all international origins.

This study uses Federal Express Corporation data t o examine information flows among 48 large metropolitan areas in t h e United States. Set within t h e context of emerging quaternary location theory, three hypotheses are introduced t o explain t h e bases for information flows among metropolitan areas: information genesis, hierarchy of control, and spatial independence. Essential support is found for all three hypotheses. Supply considerations, rather than demand, are fundamental in information genesis; flows are strongly asymmetrical, reflecting a marked hierarchy of control; and distance plays a minor role in the spatial configuration of flows, especially at t h e highest level of t h e metropolitan hierarchy. New York, in particular, dominates t h e national structure of information flows, and only ten metropolitan areas act as command and control centers, creating a highly asymmetric flow in which these ten centers originate a high proportion of total flows. Principal components analysis identified five dominant centers of information genesis: New York, 10s Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas-Ft. Worth. This research extends our understanding of quaternary location in that t h e largest metropolitan areas, containing t h e most specialized and scarce information, a r e most strongly interlocked with o n e another. In addition, t h e spatial extent of information flows and control by a metropolitan area decreases somewhat as t h e level of control of t h e center decreases. As t h e U.S. metropolitan economy continues to become more service and, therefore, more information-oriented, t h e future economic vitality of metropolitan areas is expected to depend o n their position within t h e hierarchy of information control.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography.Long distance commuting to all levels of the urban hierarchy is a mechanism by which income growth is spread to nonmetropolitan peripheries. Attendant income growth multipliers are variable with distance from metropolitan employment centers, but because of off-setting forces of insulation and threshold, the maximum multipliers are found at intermediate distances from a metropolitan center. The increasing potency of multipliers from the 1960s to the 1970s and extension of income growth to greater distances are influenced by in-migration, job substitution, and increased female participation rates.'The authors gratefully acknowledge the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce for funding for the research reported here. The authors also wish to note that the statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Mon, 8 Dec 2014 16:16:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LONG DISTANCE COMMUTING 49 urban hierarchy [6; 18; 19].Commuting to metropolitan employment centers is an important mechanism by which population and income growth are spread to nonmetropolitan peripheries [11]. These income transfers are realized through expenditures on land, housing, retail and service activities, and tax payments [21]. Commuting, therefore, may be viewed as a basic or export industry attracting capital and people to nonmetropolitan areas and in turn generating multiplier effects [15]. Commuting may be the single most important spatial equilibrating mechanism at this scale [12]. Regional equilibrium in wages and income is sought through commuting rather than migration.Berry attempted to verify the hypothesized relationship between metropolitan commuting and nonmetropolitan growth [1; 2]. He observed a strong spatial association between patterns of commuting, employment, income, poverty, and population. The lowest levels of economic welfare were found at the peripheries of metropolitan labor markets and their interstices. Berry's thesis is:. . . the degree of metropolitan labor market participation is the key variable in the 'regional welfare syndrome,' indexing the gradient of urban influence on surrounding areas [1, 3].Morrill later supported this position in stating:

Results from behavioral investigations of urban travel indicate the importance of privacy as a personal construct that significantly affects the manner in which individuals traverse North American urban transportation networks. With an expectation of encountering social heterogeneity in travel, the privacy aspect becomes all the more important to the traveling public. It is hypothesized in this paper that social heterogeneity within urban travel corridors significantly reduces patronage of public transportation by residents of these Corridors. A causal analysis of bus patronage in travel corridors of Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, Syracuse, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut results in the acceptance of the hypothesized relationship, and it points out a critical question that must be addressed if public transportation is to meet the desires of consumers of travel services.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography. Nonmetropolitan population growth rates currently exceed those of metropolitan areas in the aggregate within the North American settlement system. Interpretation of this population turnaround focuses on the relative importance of metropolitan spread into areas classified as nonmetropolitan as opposed to processes of growth internal to the nonmetropolitan areas. This paper empirically assesses the comparative roles of extended commuting and localized commuting in the expansion of urbanization in a segment of the intermetropolitan periphery. Expansion and intensification of commuting fields associated with employment centers within the periphery is found to be at least as important as growth in commuting to adjacent metropolitan centers in explaining population change within the periphery studied. The results support the contention that the population turnaround is as much a function of growth processes internal to the intermetropolitan periphery as expansion of adjacent metropolitan areas.Extended commuting involves worker movements across county boundaries from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan areas. The level of extended commuting has been accepted as a basic measure of the expansion of metropolitan fields into remaining intermetropolitan peripheries or those areas that lie between metropolitan centers [4]. Caution, however, has been urged by Taaffe, et al., regarding the extension of broad findings based on study at national scale to more localized areas in the interpretation of the contemporary urbanization process [16]. They have also called for additional study of extended commuting and its relationship to population change and the extension of urbanism in other locales. A primary concern of this paper, moreover, is to assess the roles played by both extended commuting and internal commuting in the urbanization of the intermetropolitan periphery. In this paper, internal commuting involves worker movements such that origin and destination counties both lie within the intermetropolitan periphery.