
An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions (2016) - sytelus
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/here-are-the-real-boundaries-of-american-metropolises-decided-by-an-algorithm
======
akkartik
I like collecting links like this. Here are a few:

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3019858/a-new-map-of-the-us-
crea...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3019858/a-new-map-of-the-us-created-from-
where-we-get-our-water)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-
of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/a-new-
map-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/a-new-map-for-
america.html)

~~~
austincheney
I like your second map. People in north Texas tend to be really damn
conservative, but value independence enough that to make them more liberal you
only have to suggest group think and that they ought be more conservative.

------
bowlich
As someone whose lived all over the giant unlabelled area -- what I consider
"the west" is pretty culturally uniform across that space. Western Dakota to
eastern Idaho, northern Nevada and some of the eastern range of California.
Mostly ranching, resource extraction. A whole lot of beautiful nothing.

------
niftich
Coverage from National Geographic [1] (discussed at the time on HN [2])
provides additional detail, including that researchers chose the arbitrary
number of 50 to constrain the number of cohesive regions.

At the time, I wrote [3] the following which still applies:

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".

[1] [https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/us-commutes-
reve...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/us-commutes-reveal-new-
economic-megaregions-map/) [2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100209)
[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101206)

~~~
ghaff
Even in Boston/New England, it’s not really a single ring from the city—even
if you include its suburbs and exurbs where many companies are actually
located. Almost no one is commuting on a regular basis from Augusta Maine or
Burlington Vermont to the Boston area. It does somewhat make sense as a region
but you could easily subdivide it much further. Assuming the exercise makes
some sense you probably have to arbitrarily choose some level of granularity.

