IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v42y2015i1p23-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Size Distribution of Employment Centers within the US Metropolitan Areas

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Arribas-Bel

    (School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, England)

  • Arturo Ramos
  • Fernando Sanz-Gracia

Abstract

This study tackles the description of the size distribution of urban employment centers or, in other words, the size of areas within cities with significantly high densities of workers. Certainly, there exists a branch of urban economics that has paid substantial attention to urban employment centers, but the efforts have been focused on identification methodologies. In this paper we build on such body of research and combine it with insights from the latest contributions in the sister subfield of city size distributions to push the agenda forward in terms of the understanding of these phenomena. We consider the 359 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States in the year 2000 and reach three main conclusions: First, employment center sizes are more unevenly distributed than city sizes; second, the two functions that best describe city size distributions, namely the lognormal and the double Pareto-lognormal, also offer a good fit for the case of centers, particularly the latter; and third, several interesting statistically significant relationships (correlations) between variables related to centers and MSAs are deduced. Further experiments with a different technique of center identification suggest that the results are fairly robust to the method of choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Arribas-Bel & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia, 2015. "The Size Distribution of Employment Centers within the US Metropolitan Areas," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 42(1), pages 23-39, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:42:y:2015:i:1:p:23-39
    DOI: 10.1068/b39038
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b39038
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/b39038?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel P. McMillen, 2004. "Employment Densities, Spatial Autocorrelation, and Subcenters in Large Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 225-244, May.
    2. Daniel Griffith & David Wong, 2007. "Modeling population density across major US cities: a polycentric spatial regression approach," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 53-75, April.
    3. Bosker, Maarten & Brakman, Steven & Garretsen, Harry & Schramm, Marc, 2008. "A century of shocks: The evolution of the German city size distribution 1925-1999," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 330-347, July.
    4. Giesen, Kristian & Zimmermann, Arndt & Suedekum, Jens, 2010. "The size distribution across all cities - Double Pareto lognormal strikes," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 129-137, September.
    5. Sergio Rey & Brett Montouri, 1999. "US Regional Income Convergence: A Spatial Econometric Perspective," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 143-156.
    6. Rafael González-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia & María Vera-Cabello, 2015. "Size distributions for all cities: Which one is best?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 177-196, March.
    7. Roberta Capello & Peter Nijkamp (ed.), 2009. "Handbook of Regional Growth and Development Theories," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12874.
    8. P. C. Cheshire & E. S. Mills (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    9. François Riguelle & Isabelle Thomas & Ann Verhetsel, 2007. "Measuring urban polycentrism: a European case study and its implications," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 193-215, March.
    10. Xavier Gabaix & Rustam Ibragimov, 2011. "Rank - 1 / 2: A Simple Way to Improve the OLS Estimation of Tail Exponents," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 24-39, January.
    11. Craig, Steven G. & Ng, Pin T., 2001. "Using Quantile Smoothing Splines to Identify Employment Subcenters in a Multicentric Urban Area," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 100-120, January.
    12. Nathan B. Anderson & William T. Bogart, 2001. "The Structure of Sprawl: Identifying and Characterizing Employment Centers in Polycentric Metropolitan Areas," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 147-169, January.
    13. Luís M A Bettencourt & José Lobo & Deborah Strumsky & Geoffrey B West, 2010. "Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(11), pages 1-9, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Broxterman & Anthony Yezer, 2021. "Human capital divergence and the size distribution of cities: Is Gibrat’s law obsolete?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(12), pages 2549-2568, September.
    2. Hui Wang & Feng Yuan & Yehua Dennis Wei & Wen Chen & Lei Wang, 2021. "Understanding spatial and compositional dynamics of employment centers in urban China: Empirical evidence from Nanjing," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 2635-2661, December.
    3. Robert Manduca, 2021. "The spatial structure of US metropolitan employment: New insights from administrative data," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(5), pages 1357-1372, June.
    4. John R. Hipp & Jae Hong Kim & Benjamin Forthun, 2021. "Proposing new measures of employment deconcentration and spatial dispersion across metropolitan areas in the US," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(3), pages 815-841, June.
    5. Kevin Kane & John R Hipp & Jae Hong Kim, 2018. "Los Angeles employment concentration in the 21st century," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(4), pages 844-869, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando & González-Val, Rafael, 2013. "A new framework for the US city size distribution: Empirical evidence and theory," MPRA Paper 52190, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Rafael González‐Val, 2019. "Historical urban growth in Europe (1300–1800)," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(2), pages 1115-1136, April.
    3. Rafael González-Val, 2021. "The Spanish spatial city size distribution," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(6), pages 1609-1631, July.
    4. Cieślik Andrzej & Teresiński Jan, 2016. "Does Zipf’s law hold for Polish cities?," Miscellanea Geographica. Regional Studies on Development, Sciendo, vol. 20(4), pages 5-10, December.
    5. Rafael González-Val, 2019. "US city-size distribution and space," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 283-300, July.
    6. Rafael González-Val, 2012. "A Nonparametric Estimation of the Local Zipf Exponent for all US Cities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 39(6), pages 1119-1130, December.
    7. Chunil Kim & Choongik Choi, 2019. "Towards Sustainable Urban Spatial Structure: Does Decentralization Reduce Commuting Times?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-28, February.
    8. Jaume Masip Tresserra, 2012. "Identifying the Employment and Population Centers at regional and metropolitan scale: The Case of Catalonia and Barcelona," ERSA conference papers ersa12p70, European Regional Science Association.
    9. Paolo Veneri, 2010. "Urban Polycentricity and the Costs of Commuting: Evidence from Italian Metropolitan Areas," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 403-429, September.
    10. Asif, Muhammad & Hussain, Zawar & Asghar, Zahid & Hussain, Muhammad Irfan & Raftab, Mariya & Shah, Said Farooq & Khan, Akbar Ali, 2021. "A statistical evidence of power law distribution in the upper tail of world billionaires’ data 2010–20," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 581(C).
    11. Miguel Puente-Ajovín & Arturo Ramos, 2015. "On the parametric description of the French, German, Italian and Spanish city size distributions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(2), pages 489-509, March.
    12. Josic Hrvoje & Bašić Maja, 2018. "Reconsidering Zipf’s law for regional development: The case of settlements and cities in Croatia," Miscellanea Geographica. Regional Studies on Development, Sciendo, vol. 22(1), pages 22-30, March.
    13. Kwok Tong Soo, 2018. "Innovation across cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 295-314, March.
    14. Kristian GIESEN & Jens SÜDEKUM, 2012. "The French Overall City Size Distribution," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 36, pages 107-126.
    15. Ronan Lyons & Elisa Maria Tirindelli, 2022. "The Rise & Fall of Urban Concentration in Britain: Zipf, Gibrat and Gini across two centuries," Trinity Economics Papers tep0522, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    16. Rafael Gonz�lez-Val & Luis Lanaspa, 2016. "Patterns in US Urban Growth, 1790-2000," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 289-309, February.
    17. Jaume Masip Tresserra, 2012. "Does Employment Density death? Towards a new integrated methodology to identify and characterize Sub-Centres," ERSA conference papers ersa12p71, European Regional Science Association.
    18. González-Val, Rafael, 2018. "The spatial distribution of US cities," MPRA Paper 89586, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Paolo VENERI, 2010. "The Identification of Sub-centres in Two Italian Metropolitan Areas: a Functional Approach," Working Papers 343, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    20. Rafael González-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia & María Vera-Cabello, 2015. "Size distributions for all cities: Which one is best?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 177-196, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:42:y:2015:i:1:p:23-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.