National Academies Press: OpenBook

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World (2003)

Chapter: A Concepts and Definitions of Metropolitan Regions

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Suggested Citation:"A Concepts and Definitions of Metropolitan Regions." National Research Council. 2003. Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10693.
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Page 481
Suggested Citation:"A Concepts and Definitions of Metropolitan Regions." National Research Council. 2003. Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10693.
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Page 482
Suggested Citation:"A Concepts and Definitions of Metropolitan Regions." National Research Council. 2003. Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10693.
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Page 483

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Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World A Concepts and Definitions of Metropolitan Regions For many years, urban geographers have struggled to find conceptual categories in which to place those settlements that spread beyond the political or administrative bounds of the “city” itself. In high-income countries, much effort has gone into devising new categories appropriate to the evolving nature of cities, beginning with the recognition of suburbanization in Europe and North America (Cham- pion, 1998). The metropolitan concept that evolved over much of the twentieth century emerged from industrial urban forms: concentrated, core-oriented pro- duction that, by agglomerating industry and employment in a single center and packing the population around the center and along radiating transport networks, provided a spatial solution to the problem of slow and expensive transport (Adams, 1995; Berry, 1995). The production and distribution of goods and an emphasis on radial movement to and from the urban core gave way to the rise of the ser- vice economy, with communications increasingly substituting for movement and movement occurring in all directions at all times of the day and week, in this way generating what has been termed an “urban field” (Adams, 1995; Friedmann and Miller, 1965). Recent literature has drawn attention to conceptual analogies in the cities of poor countries, particularly in terms of the growth and outward spread of metropolitan areas and the tendency for initially separate urban centers to be merged in wider metropolitan regions. There is a suggestion that the megacities of low- and high-income countries may have more in common with each other, irrespective of their locations on the globe, than they have with other parts of their own urban systems (Champion, 1998). McGee and Griffiths (1998), for example, note the convergence of Bangkok and Los Angeles, both being territorially vast, amorphous, multicentered regions with populations residing up to 100 kilometers from the city core. 481 Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 482 CITIES TRANSFORMED In recent years, many researchers have argued that the simple classifications of “central city” and “suburb” have become obsolete. In the United States and else- where, these researchers see an emerging pattern of settlement taking the form of increasingly dispersed and decentralized centers of activity and residential zones (Berry, 1995; Castells, 1989; Fishman, 1990). To try to incorporate this new and evolving reality into a definition of settlement forms for use in the dissemination of statistical data is clearly a daunting task. In the decade leading up to the 2000 Census, the U.S. Bureau of the Census oversaw a large-scale review of alternative approaches to delineating metropolitan and nonmetropolitan settlements as part of an examination of metropolitan area (MA) statistical standards. This review was unusually thorough and is perhaps as interesting for its participatory process as for its conclusions. The overriding concern was that metropolitan standards had become needlessly complex, both conceptually and operationally. Greatest attention was paid to the definition of building blocks—the small- est territorial units from which cities and metropolitan regions are formed—the methods of aggregating these blocks, and territorial coverage. Four papers were commissioned for the review, and these papers outlined four rather different ap- proaches (Adams, 1995; Berry, 1995; Frey and Speare, 1995; Morrill, 1995). Some of the researchers advocated the use of census tracts as the basic geospatial unit, with journey-to-work data being used to define clusters. The authors of two papers favored the use of counties, however, with one of these papers suggesting that commuting time be used as a clustering criterion and the other suggesting the use of population density. The analytic task was complicated by external constraints and pressures, in- cluding political pressure from local interests. Many smaller cities expressed an interest in being designated as standard metropolitan areas (SMAs) for prestige and business reasons, and many developed public relations campaigns and applied political pressure on their congressional delegations (Dahmann, 1999). In the end, the review resulted in a recommendation that a core-based statisti- cal area (CBSA) classification replace the MA classification. The cores (i.e., the densely settled concentrations of population) would be Census Bureau–defined urbanized areas and smaller densely settled “settlement clusters” identified in Census 2000. The CBSA classification identified three types of areas on the basis of total population of all cores in the CBSA: (1) megapolitan areas, de- fined around cores of at least 1 million population; (2) macropolitan areas, defined around cores of 50,000 to 999,999 population; and (3) micropolitan areas, defined around cores of 10,000 to 49,000 population. The identification of micropolitan areas extended the concepts of core-based approaches to smaller population centers, which had previously been relegated to a nonmetropolitan residual category. This new approach addressed the problem that the area out- side metropolitan settlements, which includes more than 10,000 smaller cities and Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS OF METROPOLITAN REGIONS 483 towns, huge expanses of open country, and over four-fifths of U.S.land, had been consigned to an uncategorized and undifferentiated status. Because data on counties and their equivalents are both available and familiar, the review recommended continued use of these entities as the building blocks for statistical areas, although it did not preclude the adoption of subcountry en- tities, such as tracts or mail (ZIP) code areas, for the future. It was further de- cided that commuting (journey-to-work) data from the Census Bureau (which will soon be available on an annual basis from the Census Bureau’s American Com- munity Survey) should continue to be regarded as the most reliable measure of functional integration between areas. The utility of other data measuring func- tional ties—including telephone traffic patterns, cellular telephone service, media market penetration, Internet use, and purchasing patterns—was evaluated. The re- view generated the recommendation that a commuting threshold of 25 percent be adopted to establish qualifying linkages between outlying counties and counties containing CBSA cores. It was noted that the percentage of a county’s employed residents who commuted to the central county or counties (or who commuted from outlying to central counties) was an unambiguous, clear measure of whether a potential outlying county should qualify for inclusion. In a striking departure from the previous MA standard, a recommendation of the review was not to use measures of “settlement structure.” In the previous standard, the level of population density, the percentage urban, and population growth rates were all used, together with measures of commuting, to establish whether outlying counties should be included in an MA. The review led to the conclusion that with the changes in the nature of settlement, commuting patterns, and communications technologies, settlement structure had lost much of its former connection to industrial, occupational, and family structure and could no longer serve as a reliable indicator of metropolitan character. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

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Virtually all of the growth in the world's population for the foreseeable future will take place in the cities and towns of the developing world. Over the next twenty years, most developing countries will for the first time become more urban than rural. The benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, but the speed and sheer scale of this transformation present many challenges. A new cast of policy makers is emerging to take up the many responsibilities of urban governance—as many national governments decentralize and devolve their functions, programs in poverty, health, education, and public services are increasingly being deposited in the hands of untested municipal and regional governments. Demographers have been surprisingly slow to devote attention to the implications of the urban transformation.

Drawing from a wide variety of data sources, many of them previously inaccessible, Cities Transformed explores the implications of various urban contexts for marriage, fertility, health, schooling, and children's lives. It should be of interest to all involved in city-level research, policy, planning, and investment decisions.

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