Extended and Internal Commuting in the Transformation of the Intermetropolitan Periphery

Abstract

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.

Rural population change in Nova Scotia, 1991–2001: bivariate and multivariate analysis of key drivers

“…Such areas may even flourish demographically, by attracting in-migrants seeking cheaper housing and/or perceived improvements in lifestyle, yet within convenient range of their urban jobs. The phenomenon of exurbanisation (Spectorsky 1955) or CRD (Russwurm 1976) is well entrenched in North America, and its social and economic bases have been fully explored in the rural literature (Patel 1980;Taaffe 1980;Fisher and Mitchelson 1981;Coppack 1988;Davies and Yeates 1991;Morrill 1992;Bryant et al 2000;Schmitt and Henry 2000;Millward 2003;Walker 2003). For both cultural and economic reasons, Nova Scotia exhibits a high degree of exurban development: land prices are extremely low, development controls are minimal and a rural ethos is still prevalent.…”

The Exurbanization of America and Its Planning Policy Implications

“…Costs There is the interesting phenomenon that households tend to underestimate or disregard the fixed and variable costs of commuting, with the result that residences are dispersed more than expected by economists (Fisher and Mitchelson 1981a). Winger (1970), for example, observed that real total expenditures of households for new homes built farther out were actually above those paid for comparable existing housing closer in.…”

Aspects of the Journey-to-Work Within a Small City Laborshed

“…Smaller cities located in nonmetropolitan areas have emerged as important employment nodes during a period of escalating energy costs, particularly personal transportation costs (Berry and Dahmann, 1977;Taaffe, Gauthier, and Maraffa, 1980;Fisher and Mitchelson, 1981). Since the common metropolitan pattern of residential location by income will not necessarily be replicated in this setting, more empirical research is needed before explanations derived from metropolitan areas can be applied to small city commuting.…”