Full Citation

Title: The spatial structure of US metropolitan employment: New insights from administrative data

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2020

ISBN:

ISSN: 23998091

DOI: 10.1177/2399808320934821

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Urban researchers have long debated the extent to which metropolitan employment is monocentric, polycentric, or diffuse. In this paper I use high-resolution data based on unemployment insurance records to show that employment in US metropolitan areas is not centralized but is spatially concentrated. Unlike residents, who form a continuous surface covering most parts of each metropolitan area, jobs have a bimodal spatial distribution, with most blocks containing no jobs whatsoever and a small number having extremely high employment densities. Across the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas, about 75% of jobs are located on the 6.5% of built land in Census blocks with at least twice as many jobs as people. These relative proportions are extremely consistent across cities, even though they vary greatly in the physical density at which they are constructed. Motivated by these empirical regularities, I introduce an algorithm to identify contiguous business districts and classify them into four major types. Based solely on the relative densities of employment and population, this algorithm is both simpler to implement and more flexible than current approaches, requiring no metro-specific tuning parameters and no assumptions about urban spatial layout.

Url: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2399808320934821

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Authors: Manduca, Robert

Periodical (Full): Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

Issue: 5

Volume: 48

Pages: 1357-1372

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Land Use/Urban Organization, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography

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