Metropolitan area

About: Metropolitan area is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26029 publications have been published within this topic receiving 385648 citations. The topic is also known as: metro & metro area.

Density and the Journey to Work

Abstract: This paper evaluates the influence of residential density on commuting behavior across U.S. cities while controlling for available opportunities, the technology of transportation infrastructure, and individual socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. The measures of metropolitan and local density are addressed separately. We suggest that metropolitan residential density serves principally as a surrogate for city size. We argue that markets react to high interaction costs found in large cities by raising density rather than density being a cause of those high costs. Local residential density measures relative location (accessibility) within the metropolitan region as well as indexing the level of congestion. We conduct regressions to predict commuting time, speed, and distance by mode of travel on a cross-section of individuals nationally and city by city. The results indicate that residential density in the area around the tripmaker's home is an important factor: the higher the density the lower the speed and the shorter the distance. However, density's effect on travel time is ambiguous, speed and distance are off-setting effects on time. The paper suggests a threshold density at which the decrease in distance is overtaken by the congestion effects, resulting in a residential density between 7,500 and 10,000 persons per square mile (neither the highest nor lowest) with the shortest duration auto commutes.

Calibrating a neural network‐based urban change model for two metropolitan areas of the Upper Midwest of the United States

Abstract: We parameterized neural net‐based models for the Detroit and Twin Cities metropolitan areas in the US and attempted to test whether they were transferable across both metropolitan areas. Three different types of models were developed. First, we trained and tested the neural nets within each region and compared them against observed change. Second, we used the training weights from one area and applied them to the other. Third, we selected a small subset (∼1%) of the Twin Cities area where a lot of urban change occurred. Four model performance metrics are reported: (1) Kappa; (2) the scale which correct and paired omission/commission errors exceed 50%; (3) landscape pattern metrics; and (4) percentage of cells in agreement between model simulations. We found that the neural net model in most cases performed well on pattern but not location using Kappa. The model performed well only in one case where the neural net weights from one area were used to simulate the other. We suggest that landscape metrics are ...

Responses of benthic macroinvertebrates to environmental changes associated with urbanization in nine metropolitan areas

Abstract: Responses of benthic macroinvertebrates along gradients of urban intensity were investigated in nine metropolitan areas across the United States. Invertebrate assemblages in metropolitan areas where forests or shrublands were being converted to urban land were strongly related to urban intensity. In metropolitan areas where agriculture and grazing lands were being converted to urban land, invertebrate assemblages showed much weaker or nonsignificant relations with urban intensity because sites with low urban intensity were already degraded by agriculture. Ordination scores, the number of EPT taxa, and the mean pollution-tolerance value of organisms at a site were the best indicators of changes in assemblage condition. Diversity indices, functional groups, behavior, and dominance metrics were not good indicators of urbanization. Richness metrics were better indicators of urban effects than were abundance metrics, and qualitative samples collected from multiple habitats gave similar results to those of single habitat quantitative samples (riffles or woody snags) in all metropolitan areas. Changes in urban intensity were strongly correlated with a set of landscape variables that was consistent across all metropolitan areas. In contrast, the instream environmental variables that were strongly correlated with urbanization and invertebrate responses varied among metropolitan areas. The natural environmental setting determined the biological, chemical, and physical instream conditions upon which urbanization acts and dictated the differences in responses to urbanization among metropolitan areas. Threshold analysis showed little evidence for an initial period of resistance to urbanization. Instead, assemblages were degraded at very low levels of urbanization, and response rates were either similar across the gradient or higher at low levels of urbanization. Levels of impervious cover that have been suggested as protective of streams (5-10%) were associated with significant assemblage degradation and were not protective.

The Impact of Stadium and Professional Sports on Metropolitan Area Development

Abstract: More and more cities are being encouraged to subsidize sports stadiums as an economic development tool. In this paper regression analysis using census data on nine different metropolitan areas is employed to evaluate the impact of stadiums and professional sports teams on area development. Previous attempts to estimate the effectiveness of sports-based development have used assumption-driven trade multiplier models. The evidence presented here is that the presence of a new or renovated stadium has an uncertain impact on the levels of personal income and possibly a negative impact on local development relative to the region. These results should serve as a caution to those who assume or assert a large positive stadium impact.