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.

The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization

Abstract: The authors analyze causes and consequences of metropolitan suburbanization with a focus on trends in the United States. The effect of employment transportation and travel considerations is compared with the impact of urban problems such as taxes public school quality crime and environmental quality. (ANNOTATION)

2013 NCHS Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for Counties.

Abstract: NCHS data systems are often used to study the association between urbanization level of residence and health and to monitor the health of urban and rural residents. Conducting such analyses requires an urban-rural classification scheme. This report describes a six-level urban-rural classification scheme developed by the National Center for Health Statistics for the 3,141 U.S. counties and county-equivalents. The most urban category consists of large metropolitan central counties and the most rural category consists of nonmetropolitan noncore counties. The county classifications are based on the following information: (1) the 2003 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) definitions of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties (with revisions through 2005); (2) the Rural-Urban Continuum Codes and the Urban Influence Codes classifications developed by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and (3) county-level data on several variables from Census 2000 and 2004 postcensal population estimates. This classification scheme, unlike others that have been developed since 2003, separates large metropolitan counties into two categories: large metro central and large metro fringe. These two categories were created because of striking differences in several health measures between residents of these two types of counties. Discriminant analysis was used to verify the classification of counties into these two categories.

A Theory of Urban Growth

Abstract: In an economy experiencing endogenous economic growth and exogenous population growth, we explore two main themes: how urbanization affects efficiency of the growth process and how growth affects patterns of urbanization. Localized information spillovers promote agglomeration and human capital accumulation fosters endogenous growth. Individual city sizes grow with local human capital accumulation and knowledge spillovers; and city numbers generally increase, which we demonstrate is consistent with empirical evidence. We analyze whether local governments can successfully internalize local dynamic externalities. In addition, we explore how growth involves real income differences across city types and how urbanization can foster income inequality. Most nonagricultural production in developed countries occurs in metropolitan areas. The underlying reasons why economic activity agglomerates into cities—localized information and knowledge spillover—also make cities the engines of economic growth in an We gratefully acknowledge support of the National Science Foundation (grants SBR 9422440 and SBR9730142) for this research. The work has benefited from conversations with Harl Ryder on the dynamics of the model and from comments by Gilles Duranton and participants in seminars at Brown, Colorado, and Texas, Austin and a presentation at an ISIT Seminar sponsored by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Urban Diversity and Economic Growth

Abstract: At the risk of some simplification, it is possible to identify four periods of intense study of cities by economists. Each of these has led to an increased understanding of the economics of urban areas and the unique role played by cities in the modem economy. The first of these periods occurred in the decade after World War I—only about ten years after the truck revolutionized the transport of goods within urban areas. This period included the first systematic empirical analysis of the forces affecting the location of firms and households within cities. Robert Murray Haig (1926) and a number of other microeconomists at Columbia analyzed the spatial pattems of manufacturing activity in lower Manhattan and in the rest of New York City. Haig jmd his colleagues devoted considerable attention to "where things 'belong' in an urban area" (p. 402), providing the first systematic economic analysis of urban spatial structure. For example, they analyzed the garment industry, concluding that it was destined "by nature" to disperse north of 14th Street, and predicting that it would follow the estabhshed spatial pattem of the cooperage (barrelmaking) industry. Standardization in size and quality of barrels had meant that identical barrels could be made throughout the New York metropolitan area, even in New Jersey, and the introduction of the truck meant that they could be transported cheaply throughout the region and exported. The second of these periods—though not in chronological order—began in the mid-1960s. It formalized many of the insights about location incentives within urban areas which had been uncovered a half century before, mixed them with the logic of Heinrich von Thunen's (1826) ancient theories about agricultural crops and land values, and applied them to the hotisehold sector. The works of William Alonso (1964)