
Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions' - nopinsight
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/us-commutes-reveal-new-economic-megaregions-map/
======
bane
Coming form the mid-Atlantic region, I'm continuously surprised at what a non-
entity Baltimore has turned out to be. It seems to have been entirely subsumed
by its more well known neighbors: D.C. and Philly -- yet being so near to
those two seems to have almost entirely escaped the economic and social
revival that's happened in those two major regions as well.

One other thought, the artificial, and somewhat arbitrary drawing of state
boundaries has also made urban planning needlessly complex. If the U.S. had a
method to redraw state boundaries every 20-30 years, these regions would be
_just_ about the right size to be states, and this would greatly simplify the
planning and coordination of everything from transit to education delivery.

Instead, most of these regions cut across these administrative boundaries and
medium sized 5 year projects turn into multi-decade, highly wasteful, high
friction programs with an extraordinary high chance of failure.

~~~
bkeroack
US states are not merely administrative divisions (like provinces in other
nations) but are literal independently-governed _states_. Would you also
propose re-drawing the borders of every EU nation every 30 years to reflect
population movement?

This misunderstanding (provinces vs states) leads to much misunderstanding of
the US federal system in general, the electoral college, role of the federal
government, etc.

~~~
c3534l
Yeah, I'm not sure how people would handle having half of their guns made
illegal, having to learn new traffic laws, having you taxes completely change
to the point where your state income taxes can go from 0% to 15%, your house
becomes illegal because of different building regulations, public schools
become charter schools, marijuana suddenly becomes illegal and you're a
marijuana farmer, and this happens every 10 years or so. It would be chaos and
require a fundamentally different kind of government organization.

~~~
VLM
Those would solely be rural problems, and we have a long tradition of support
the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible, so it would be
politically consistent to do exactly that.

~~~
c3534l
Eh, rural areas actually receive more in federal funding than they pay in
taxes while paying less in taxes anyway due to decreased costs of living.
Additionally, the US heavily subsidizes farming and funds infrastructure
development for rural areas that are not available to more populated states
and areas, such as gas, electric, and internet services. Economically
speaking, rural areas also disproportionately benefit from projects like
interstate highways, public water infrastructure, and bridges. Additionally,
rural areas also consume, by far, the most in entitlement resources. And
finally, rural areas are disproportionately represented in government, to the
point that someone in a city like New York gets nearly half the amount of
votes as someone in Montana, and also greatly suffering in the Senate which is
not awarded on the basis of population. To sum up, rural areas pay no net
taxes, receive economically beneficial subsidies and policies, and are given
more political rights than people who live in urban areas. The idea that
they're being screwed in a nation where they're the ones with all the control
is absurd.

~~~
throwaway729
I think the key observation is this: everything you say is true, and yet _many
rural areas still have terrible economies_.

It's hard to square that circle -- that rural areas are heavily subsidized but
yet still economically depressed and under-served. Hence, comments like the
one from VLM above.

Of course, it all boils down to economic fundamentals: cities and metro areas
create a network effect that's difficult or impossible to compete with, no
matter how well subsidized rural areas are.

The fact that rural areas suffer _in spite_ of their greater representation
and massive economic subsidies is a difficult pill for a person from a rural
area to swallow. A "they are screwing us" mentality is a much more compelling
narrative.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Are the subsidies over-rated? We have energy coops (which we pay for
entirely); we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody);
there are some agricultural supports (insurance programs?) but only a tiny
fraction of rural residents are in farming. What else?

~~~
throwaway729
_> Are the subsidies over-rated?_

First, I don't think so. Second, an over-rated subsidy is still a subsidy. So
even if they are over-rated, that's still no proof of VLM's statement -- it's
more just looking the gift horse in the mouth.

 _> We have energy coops (which we pay for entirely)_

This isn't true everywhere.

 _> we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody)_

Perhaps for the interstate system you could make this case. I'm not sure.
Certainly there are cases where the interstate system inconvenience cities for
the benefit of an extremely tiny but politically powerful rural district. The
same happens with state highways.

But at the state level, rural roads _are_ heavily subsidized. State highways
are typically extremely important to rural areas, and those are mostly funded
by urban and suburban tax bases.

 _> but only a tiny fraction of rural residents are in farming_

But farming is still very important to local economies in rural areas, even if
it's no longer a major employer. Also, "some" is a bit of an understatement --
half a trillion in federal funds over half a decade. And that's just the main
farm bill -- excluding other federal and state assistance programs.

 _> What else?_

* Schools for sure. Most states _heavily_ subsidize rural schools in their funding formulas. States and the federal gov't also subsidize rural schools through programs that are not even accounted for by these funding formulas -- e.g. tuition waivers and sometimes even salaries for teachers that teach in rural schools.

* Federal and state entitlement programs -- this one isn't even close to debatable.

* Political representation. Again, not even close to debatable. I consider this independently of all of the other indirect economic benefits that stem from the representation for a lot of reasons. To give one, the conservative social agenda disproportionately targets and complicates the lives of the non-white non-christians concentrated within cities.

~~~
stonemetal
>half a trillion in federal funds over half a decade

Don't multiply to make it sound like something. That works out to less than
100 million a year. To three significant digits that is 0% of the budget.

~~~
amdavidson
Half a trillion over half a decade is 100 _billion_ per year.

I make no claim to the accuracy of the original statistic, but if that is the
case and the federal budget is 3.7 _trillion_ [0] that is 2.7 percent of the
budget.

0:
[https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51110](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51110)

------
niftich
The arbitrary choice of 50 regions results in some fairly generous
interpretations of 'regions'.

Namely, this method produces two kinds of regions: ones that are clustered
around a single metropolitan area that has a higher-than-average commuter pull
around its hinterland, and ones that are slightly too far from a major metro
and lump together a chain of areas that form a loose "commuter continuum" of
areas where commuters have two or more equally plausible choices to commuter
to -- this chain then hops along interstate highways, grouping unrelated towns
across hundreds of miles into the same region.

Take the one that they call 'Corn Belt', encompassing Des Moines,
Davenport/Moline, and every single city in Illinois on I-74 (including Urbana-
Champaign!). In no universe do people commute hundreds of miles along I-74. In
truth, this is a polycentric area with many distinct loci which attract their
own, distinct set of commuters: Des Moines/Ames; Cedar Rapids/Iowa City; Quad
Cities; Peoria; Urbana-Champaign. The "cohesiveness" of the region exists
solely in contrast to its neighbors: that more populous metros on the region's
fringes are all too far out of sane commuting distance.

Or the Appalachians: Roanoke in Virginia forms a vital locus for much of west-
central Virginia and yet is swallowed into a much larger region including
Greensboro, Raleigh, and Wilmington(!), because people living midway between
Roanoke and Greensboro (like in Danville, VA, or Martinsville, VA), have two
equally plausible larger job centers to commute to. The same can be said about
Charleston, WV, which forms a job hub in West Virginia, but is grouped
together with Columbus and most of Ohio because smaller towns along the Ohio
River are roughly equidistant from either.

It helps me to look at each of their regions and think "people rarely commute
outside of their region", rather than the more natural interpretation of
"people commute along their region".

~~~
rosalinekarr
Yeah, I had the same thought when I saw my own region, Chattanooga, TN. This
map shows our whole city as commuters to Atlanta. Almost no one commutes to
Atlanta from here. It's a 3 hour drive without traffic and a 5 hour drive with
traffic, and the only time Atlanta doesn't have traffic is 3 AM in the
morning.

~~~
emodendroket
I hear it's not much worse at 3 AM at night.

------
davidw
I really don't get what this is supposed to represent, exactly.

No one commutes from Ashland, Oregon to Portland Oregon - it's a 4+ hour
drive. Yet they're in the same pink area. Meanwhile, no one really commutes
from Bend to Portland either (2.5 hour drive in good weather), but we're brown
over here.

There's certainly some more cultural affinity between cities in Oregon's
Willamette Valley than with the more conservative central and eastern part of
the state, but even that only holds for the larger cities - there are plenty
of pretty 'red' places down the I-5 corridor.

~~~
sakopov
Oh i'm sure people commute. A 4 hour drive is fairly reasonable. I live in
Denver and commute to Kansas City (8.5 hours) once a month to visit my folks.
If you include gas prices and the price of rentals it comes out to be cheaper
than flying and renting a car in KC. With shorter distances this would
probably be a huge factor for many. For example, most folks in KC drive to StL
which is a 3.5 hour drive. I don't think anyone I've ever known in KC flew to
StL.

~~~
stingrae
When I think of a commute, I think of a daily activity that takes someone back
and forth to work. Given that definition it seems totally unreasonable for
someone to spend 4 hours going one way.

~~~
Spooky23
A small number of people do stuff like this.

I worked with a consultant who lived near Scranton so he could commute to a
large number of places. (Syracuse, Albany, NYC, Jersey, Philly)

Drove 3 hours a day one way!

------
cwp
This sort of thing is fascinating to me. I think that somehow, humanity needs
to transition to a political structure where cities are the primary unit of
governance, rather than nations. That won't happen quickly or soon, but
someday...

More immediately, it's becoming increasingly clear that the "polarization"
that we're seeing in U.S. politics isn't really between left and right or Ds
and Rs. It's between the urban and rural. I'd love to see a version of this
that drew boundaries between urban centres and the countryside. That would
give us a way to start thinking about how to craft policy that recognizes the
differences between them.

~~~
SlipperySlope
Your notion, shared by Clinton, cost her the election.

~~~
justinator
But not, by a long shot, the Popular Vote.

~~~
SlipperySlope
Spending much more than Trump, campaigning in the wrong places.

Winning the popular vote big and losing the election is a manifest sign of a
failed campaign.

------
owenversteeg
From personal experience (I've lived in 3 places in the US), some of these
make sense and some don't at all. For example, the little light green region
over Idaho Falls/Pocatello area makes sense as a region and looks nice. But
Burlington and Albany being one region? They're three hours apart, separated
by a whole lotta nothing - I know because I lived a bit east of that nothing.
Or the adjacent "economic area" (in green, covering Boston/NH/Maine), which
also makes no sense. There's no way that far-north Maine, western NH, and
Boston are one economic area.

And aside from making connections that aren't there, there are some
connections that should be there that aren't. The Upper Valley is definitely
either one economic region (or a a subset of a larger region) and it's
literally split in half, in two separate regions. It's pretty funny, the way
the map splits the economic zones down the Connecticut river you'd think we
didn't have bridges.

Fun unrelated fact: Pocatello has "the worst flag of North America" according
to the North American Vexillological Association:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_Pocatello_Idaho.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_Pocatello_Idaho.jpg)

~~~
sulam
Reading the article makes it clear what's going on here, although you have to
get to the end. I had the same reaction to the idea of Tahoe and SF being
considered part of the same "megaregion", since while someone may drive from
Tahoe to SF on an irregular basis, the number of people doing it everyday must
be miniscule. So I read deeper to try and understand the basis of these
things.

TL;DR -- they arbitrarily chose 50 as the number of regions to consider.
Everything above a certain threshold gets associated with some sort of region,
and then they did basic clustering to see which commutes get assigned to which
region. So in my Tahoe example, more people are commuting from the Tahoe area
to Sacramento than to Reno, so Tahoe ends up associated with the entire SF Bay
Area megaregion instead of with Reno, which it's geographically much closer
to. If there had been more regions, Sacramento would have gotten its own
region most likely.

------
ChuckMcM
I think it shows us once again how clustering algorithms fail which isn't very
useful. I can think of several methodologies that would make for a better
analysis for urban planning.

However the one thing it did suggest is that Google would be in an interesting
position to create such data sets using their maps navigation data. Take every
commercial address in a region and the compute the commute time to and from
every residential address in the same region. Pick some arbitrary one-way
commute cut offs like 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minutes.
Then plot them on a spectrum from based on the weighted average of commute
times (so if a site had 6,000 30 minute commutes, 40,000 60 minute commutes,
and 250,000 90 minute commutes it would get one score higher than a place that
only had 1000 30 minute commutes and 300,000 90 minute commutes.

~~~
flashman
> it shows us once again how clustering algorithms fail

What do you mean by 'fail'? It looks like the algorithm ultimately did what
they wanted it to, so do you mean some sort of relevance or practical failure?

All clustering algorithms do is propose groupings in which intra-group links
are stronger than inter-group links. The researchers measured the _modularity_
of their clusters, where 0 is 'no better than random' and 1 is 'networks with
strong community structure', and scored over 0.9 (though they had to make some
changes to eliminate long-distance linkages).

I agree that Google would have much better commuting data, if they chose not
to anonymise their maps data collection, because they could determine where
your phone usually spends the night and the middle hours of the day... as well
as the route taken to get there and back.

------
wjossey
A couple points of clarification for those who found this interesting:

[1] Data around commuting time can be found in the American Community Survey
(ACS), which is released annually with 1, 3, and 5 year rollups (for general
blending of accuracy vs. recency). [2] This data is looking specifically at
work commute times, not any personal travel.

I've been taking a couple months off between jobs, and learning the ACS has
become a hobby during that time. Lots of interesting and fascinating data that
we collect on ourselves as a country.

Reference:
[https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/](https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/)

~~~
rch
I work with ACS data as well. I'd love to chat about your interests sometime.

------
erikpukinskis
You can call this "research" but it's not science. When you do science you
can't just run your data, decide the numbers don't look right, and then tweak
them until the picture produced looks publishable.

That is a way to make art that reflects your worldview, but it won't have any
science content left in it.

If they wanted to do science they would need to devise a model of megaregions,
form hypotheses, design tests ahead of time to confirm or refute those
hypothesis, and only then run the data.

------
Spooky23
Cool maps that correlate with my acendotal experience.

When you take the early (5-6 am) morning train from Albany to Penn Station
regularly, it's easy to spot the small number off small number commuters from
the more typical government workers, lawyers and salesmen. It's about a 50/50
mix of construction guys and attorneys.

I sat with one of the constructions guys once and we chatted. He was an
electrician and actually drove another 45 minutes from his home to the train.
Had a big family and couldn't afford NY metro costs. Claimed that a majority
of the guys he worked with either lived in the Hudson Valley or Pennsylvania
for the same reason.

That really says a lot... I think a commuter pass costs like $800/mo for that
trip!

------
yellowapple
"And I’m not convinced the Bay Area-Sacramento megaregion where I live should
extend all the way to Nevada."

I agree with this. I live in Truckee, and would be much more inclined to
commute to Reno (which is 30 minutes away) than Sacramento (which is 1 hour 30
minutes away). The more likely border would at the very least be near Donner
Pass.

The algorithms used are likely being influenced by the Sierras (and
particularly Tahoe) being a popular tourist destination for Sacramento and Bay
Area residents.

------
applecore
The Northeast _Boswash_ megalopolis[1] is a narrow 400-mile strip of land that
encompasses a population of over 50 million people.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis)

------
pizza
Looking at the map that shows Santa Cruz, I can't help but imagine how many
more commutes there would be "over the hill" on Highway 17 if there weren't
such a hilly, windy road via that commute. Eventually it might become
economically feasible to physically "move mountains" so to speak for the
purpose of unlocking greater personal transport... I wonder how much
terraforming might affect future projects across all the world, let alone
Northern California.

------
taeric
The lack of a name in the giant section in the northwest on the final map
is... interesting. I think I get why it has no name. Still odd.

Similarly, the "deep south" feels like a shoutout to Futurama. (Though,
Atlanta is already named. I guess it is "pre move to the ocean." :) )

------
xyzzy4
Why don't they give the map in high resolution? Really irritating.

------
umanwizard
I want to meet the people who are supposedly commuting to Phoenix from north
of the Grand Canyon. Do they commute by helicopter?

------
762236
I live in Menlo Park in the Bay Area, and have given specialized jobs to
contractors that drove 2 to 3 hours to fix my house. These guys target this
area, despite being so far away, and use phablets to stay connected and
maintain their Yelp presence.

------
deathhand
Oh look they published the future Hyper-loop map. How nice of them.

~~~
djsumdog
Long before a Hyper-loop will be viable, this is the map of where all our high
speed rails should have been placed.

Currently, only the California high speed corridor is under construction
(Florida has stalled and I'm not sure if the Cascades ever got funding).

We are decades behind the rest of the world in viable rail. To people who say
rail can't work in the US, just look at this map. Only the NE section has
decent rail and it's saturated for commuters. Building out the rest of the
rail infrastructure we need will reduce the need for cars and help deal with
pollution. Once cities are connected, I think we'll naturally see the
expansion of urban/commuter rail to solve the last mile problem.

------
Pica_soO
There is the landfilling trend in san francisco- i wonder- is there a point
where its more economical to extend a city in underwater suburbs?

------
beedogs
The big takeaway here for me is that a lot of people travel far too great a
distance to get to what's most likely a terrible job.

------
dbg31415
Rapid City gets a region but not Austin? Uh?

------
e2e4
somehow it is not mentioned which software was used to generate the graphics;
not even in the original article:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0166083)

------
kriro
Lubbock, Spokane...looks like it's mostly around universities in the "nowhere
land" regions?

------
btbuildem
This information would be useful when planning the next-gen transportation
network..

------
schiffern
I'm reminded of what Christopher Alexander et. al. wrote in _A Pattern
Language_. Made up of 253 patterns organized by scale, the largest scale
discussed (and therefore Pattern #1) is "Independent Regions:"

 _Do what you can to establish a world government, with a thousand independent
regions, instead of Metropolitan regions will not come to balance until each
one is small and autonomous enough to be an independent sphere of culture._

 _There are four separate arguments which have led us to this conclusion: I.
The nature and limits of human government. 2. Equity among regions in a world
community. 3. Regional planning considerations. 4. Support for the intensity
and diversity of human cultures._

 _I. There are natural limits to the size of groups that can govern themselves
in a human way. The biologist J. B. S. Haldane has remarked on this in his
paper, "On Being the Right Size":_

> _...just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for
> every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens
> could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of
> legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest
> possible democratic state. . . . (J. B. S Haldane, "On Being the Right
> Size," The World of Mathematics, Vol. II, J. R. Newman, ed. New York: Simon
> and Schuster, 1956, pp. 962-67)._

 _It is not hard to see why the government of a region becomes less and less
manageable with size. In a population of N persons, there are of the order of
N^2 person-to-person links needed to keep channels of communication open.
Naturally, when N goes beyond a certain limit, the channels of communication
needed for democracy and justice and information are simply too clogged, and
too complex; bureaucracy overwhelms human processes._

 _And, of course, as N grows the number of levels in the hierarchy of
government increases too. In small countries like Denmark there are so few
levels, that any private citizen can have access to the Minister of Education.
But this kind of direct access is quite impossible in larger countries like
England or the United States._

 _We believe the limits are reached when the population of a region reaches
some 2 to 10 million. Beyond this size, people become remote from the large-
scale processes of government. Our estimate may seem extraordinary in the
light of modern history: the nation-states have grown mightily and their
governments hold power over tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions,
of people. But these huge powers cannot claim to have a natural size._

54 regions, total population 318.9m. So that averages 5.9 million per, right
smack in the middle. A more complete analysis with a histogram would be
interesting.

------
easychewie
See previous work by Munroe:
[https://www.xkcd.com/1138/](https://www.xkcd.com/1138/)

------
benibela
So this is where people live? [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

Nothing going on Montana?

~~~
loeg
Not a lot of people in the Rocky mountains or the plains.

~~~
protomyth
I would imagine their commute data finds the area problematic.

