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Delineation of City Regions Based on Commuting Interrelations: The Example of Large Cities in Germany

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  • Kauffmann, Albrecht

Abstract

The comparison of cities with regard to their economic or demographic development may yield misleading results, if solely the cities in their administrative borders are the object of consideration. Frequently, historical borders of cities neither conform to the contemporary settlement structures, nor do they consider the mutual dependencies between cities and parts of their hinterland. Therefore, it is often claimed to use city regions as objects of comparison or for the sake of urban planning. Commonly, the delineation of functional regions is based on commuting flows from the municipalities in the hinterland of the core cities directed to the cores. A municipality is regarded as belonging to a certain city region if the share of out-commuters from this municipality to the respective core in the total mass of those employees who reside in that municipality is the largest one, and if this share exceeds a certain threshold value. However, commuting flows in the opposite direction are not considered. The method presented here delineates city regions on the base of bidirectional commuting flows. Hereby, various modifications regarding the characteristics of the employment base, the possibility of overlaps of regions, the formation of polycentric city regions, and of the minimum threshold value of mutual connectivity are applied to the sample of 81 German cities with more than 100 000 inhabitants. Finally, the effects of different kinds of regionalisation on the coefficients of regional specialisation of these cities and city regions are demonstrated.

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  • Kauffmann, Albrecht, 2012. "Delineation of City Regions Based on Commuting Interrelations: The Example of Large Cities in Germany," IWH Discussion Papers 4/2012, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:iwh-4-12
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    1. Kauffmann, Albrecht, 2021. "Befindet sich die "Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland" auf dem Weg zur räumlich integrierten Region? Eine empirische Untersuchung der Berufspendlerverflechtungen," Arbeitsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Rosenfeld, Martin T. W. & Stefansky, Andreas (ed.), "Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland" aus raumwissenschaftlicher Sicht, volume 30, pages 76-95, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    2. Kropp, Per & Schwengler, Barbara, 2017. "Stability of functional labour market regions," IAB-Discussion Paper 201721, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    3. Aguiar, Larissa Limongi & Manzato, Gustavo Garcia & Rodrigues da Silva, Antônio Nélson, 2020. "Combining travel and population data through a bivariate spatial analysis to define Functional Urban Regions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Kauffmann, Albrecht, 2015. "Wie lässt sich die Bevölkerungsentwicklung von Städten korrekt ermitteln? Eine Methode zur Bereinigung amtlicher Daten um die Effekte von Gebietsänderungen am Beispiel von Ostdeutschland," IWH Online 5/2015, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    5. Albrecht Kauffmann, 2016. "Is the ‘Central German Metropolitan Region’ spatially integrated? An empirical assessment of commuting relations," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(9), pages 1853-1868, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    city regions; functional urban regions; commuting; regional specialisation; Stadtregionen; funktionale Regionen; Pendlerverflechtungen; regionale Spezialisierung;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • R58 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Regional Development Planning and Policy

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