"The Validity of the Monocentric City Model in a Polycentric Age"

US Metropolitan Areas in 1990, 2000 and 2010

[Dani Arribas-Bel & Fernando Sanz-Gracia]

Results and code

In this article, we use local indicators of spatial association (LISA) and other spatial analysis techniques to analyze the distribution of centers with high employment density within metropolitan areas. We examine the 359 metropolitan areas across the United States at three points in time (1990, 2000, and 2010) to provide a spatio-temporal panoramic of urban spatial structure. Our analysis highlights three key findings. (1) The monocentric structure persists in a majority of metropolitan areas: 56.5% in 1990, 64.1% in 2000, and 57.7% in 2010. (2) The pattern of employment centers remains stable for most metropolitan areas: the number of centers remained the same for 74.9% of metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000 and for 85.2% between 2000 and 2010. (3) Compared with monocentric metropolitan areas, polycentric metros are larger and more dense, with higher per-capita incomes and lower poverty rates.

This website displays the results in a more interactive and intuitive way than it is allowed in the published version of the paper. Additionally, it contains the code used to generate them, as well as access to download some of the data produced by the study.

Paper

@article{doi:10.1080/02723638.2014.940693,
    author = "Arribas-Bel, Daniel and Sanz-Gracia, Fernando",
    journal = "{Urban Geography}",
    title = "{The validity of the monocentric city model in a polycentric age: US metropolitan areas in 1990, 2000 and 2010}",
    year = "in press",
    pages = "{1-18}",
    doi = "10.1080/02723638.2014.940693",
    url = "{ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02723638.2014.940693}",
    abstract = "{ In this article, we use local indicators of spatial association (LISA) and other spatial analysis techniques to analyze the distribution of centers with high employment density within metropolitan areas. We examine the 359 metropolitan areas across the United States at three points in time (1990, 2000, and 2010) to provide a spatio-temporal panoramic of urban spatial structure. Our analysis highlights three key findings. (1) The monocentric structure persists in a majority of metropolitan areas: 56.5% in 1990, 64.1% in 2000, and 57.7% in 2010. (2) The pattern of employment centers remains stable for most metropolitan areas: the number of centers remained the same for 74.9% of metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000 and for 85.2% between 2000 and 2010. (3) Compared with monocentric metropolitan areas, polycentric metros are larger and more dense, with higher per-capita incomes and lower poverty rates. }",
}

Distribution

Python code to reproduce the analysis in the paper is available as an IPython Notebook in the Results section of this site. If you are interested in downloading it, it is hosted in a GitHub repository, together with related data and code, in the following URL:

https://github.com/darribas/us_centers

The repository containts the following files:

Downloads of the repository as a single zip file are possible here.

License

Creative Commons License
"Results and code for The Validity of the Monocentric City Model in a Polycentric Age: US Metropolitan Areas in 1990, 2000 and 2010 " by Daniel Arribas-Bel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.