COMMUTING DIRECTIONALITY,A FUNCTIONAL MEASURE FOR METROPOLITAN AND NONMETROPOLITAN AREA STANDARDS |
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| Abstract: | The daily journey to work is ubiquitous in American life. Portraying commuting behavior graphically at the subcounty level, however, has been hampered by technical obstacles. With desktop GIS and new analytical tools, the spatial particulars of commuting can be given clarity. This paper explores the use of a spatial statistic, the mean weighted direction of journey-to-work flows, to aggregate and depict commuting at the census tract level for the purpose of delineating metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. Using 1990 census data for Iowa, tract-to-tract flow vectors and resultant vectors are calculated and drawn for each census tract, and a set of functional areas for the state is produced. The research suggests that the concept of commuting directionality is a community characteristic requiring further attention. Directionality may be a useful component in a census-tract-level national settlement classification system made possible with disaggregated data and annual updates through the American Community Survey. Key words: metropolitan areas, commuting, GIS, census tract, settlement classification.] |
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