Saturday, January 11, 2014

Smartphone city

Cities have been spreading our for all of recorded history. From the “walking city” (pre-1880) to the “streetcar city” (1880-1920) to the “automobile city” (post- 1920). Are we now looking at the “smartphone city” (post-2007)? Perhaps, but there is no "death of distance" to speak of.  The biggest and priciest places (London, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, etc.) continue to grow (mostly outward) and thrive. Growth is always the best indicator.

There is seemingly enough agglomeration "glue" to hold the large metro areas together -- and to justify high land prices. The growth we are getting is pretty "smart".  This is not the popular "smart growth" prescribed by people who assert they are somehow smart enough to plan whole metropolitan areas.  Rather, we are getting smarts in the form of spontaneous spatial arrangements that "click" for large numbers of people and firms.

Qian An, Jim Moore and I have been looking at the 2009 NHTS. These data are for the 50 largest U.S. metro areas. Places within metro areas are classified by NHTS as "Urban" "Suburban" and "Second City" (middle three rows, below).  Data below are for the three major trip types. The differences within each table among means and variances (with the exception of commuting variances) are fairly small. Area
Commuting Times (Minutes, Solo Drivers, One-Way)

Area
Means
Variances
Metro
25.2
338.7
Urban
22.8
214.7
Suburban
24.5
292.4
Second City
23.6
308.5
Town and Country
28.4
457.0

Means
Variances
Below are the same results for shopping and social-recreational trips:

Home-Based Shopping Trips (Minutes, Solo Drivers, One-Way)
Area
Means
Variances
Metro
14.3
130.1
Urban
14.3
141.4
Suburban
13.3
107.9
Second City
13.0
113.8
Town and Country
16.5
164.3
Home-Based Social/Recreational Trips (Minutes, Solo Drivers, One-Way)
Area
Means
Variances
Metro
18.8
241.6
Urban
19.9
257.7
Suburban
18.4
225.7
Second City
18.1
233.4
Town and Country
19.2
258.2
Here are millions of people and many businesses picking and choosing in ways that allow them to live, work and play. Yes, there are problems in the world. But the way the cities are arranging themselves is not one of them.