Intrametropolitan Employment Deconcentration and its Impact on Commuting Distances

INTRAMETROPOLITAN EMPLOYMENT DECONCENTRATION AND ITS IMPACT ON COMMUTING DISTANCES Peter O. Müller* Intrametropolitan déconcentration of employment, a strong trend since the fifties, has greatly intensified in the last few years. During the 1960's the suburban share of total metropolitan employment in the fifteen largest SMSAs rose from 37 to 48 percent, and from 1960 to 1970 job losses in the nation's central cities surpassed total losses for the preceding half century. Since 1970 the trend toward employment dispersal has accelerated, and in 1973 the suburbs overtook the central cities in total number of jobs. While accuracy and quality of information on employment déconcentration varies, a reliable recent report for the New York-Northern New Jersey metropolis captures the essence of this ongoing change in metropolitan economic geography: Manhattan's job loss between 1970 and 1972 wiped out the entire gain of the previous eleven years. The recovery of 1973 was confined to the suburban region outside New York City; the city continued to lose jobs from 1972 to 1974 in all sectors of the economy except government and services. Now new office activity in the region's older cities has turned out to be unexpectedly sensitive to recessions and is not growing. (1) The reasons underlying the swift intrametropolitan dispersal of economic activity in the last few years have been discussed elsewhere and are only briefly summarized here. (2) The advantages of metropolitan centrality have declined with opening of new freeways, the achievement of scale economies in short-distance trucking, and the increasing substitution of communications for transportation. Regional expressways have largely eliminated accessibility advantages of inner city locations over suburbs, inner city service functions have deteriorated, and manufacturers as well as service employers have shown an increasing preference for suburban locations over the aging, * Dr. Müller is Associate Professor of Geography at Temple University. This paper was accepted for publication in February, 1976. Vol. XVI, No. 1 27 more congested, more crime-ridden, and more polluted central cities. Furthermore, the prestige (enhancement of corporate image) associated with suburban locations has often supplanted economic factors in locational decision-making. Superregional shopping malls have become particularly attractive foci for former inner-city activities, as these multifunctional "minicities" have begun to confer substantial spatial order to the former disarray of suburban employment opportunities. WORK JOURNEY PATTERNS IN THE RESTRUCTURED METROPOLIS . Changes in commuter behavior, along with intrametropolitan activity déconcentration, are having a major impact upon urban transportation. No longer do central business districts attract large segments of the metropolitan labor supply; they were destinations for only about one-sixth of all SMSA work trips in 1970 and there are indications that this proportion has continued to shrink. On the other hand, commuting from city to suburbs (reverse commuting) doubled during the 1960's and continues to rise. Presently, most intraurban work journeys involve surburb-to-suburb commuting, a trend sharply accentuated by decentralization of employment opportunities (in the largest SMSAs nearly 90 percent of new job activity since 1960 has been concentrated in the suburbs ) . The apparent lack of effort by commuters to minimize homeworkplace distances underscores the conclusion that selection of residential location is based primarily upon the relative social status, or prestige, associated with a community. The American practice of almost immediately following an increase in income or rank with a move to a "better" neighborhood, even if it is substantially removed from the place of employment, has become so commonplace that the place of work can no longer be viewed as a limitation upon residential choice. This link between upward social and spatial mobility has become a leading dimension of contemporary urbanization. Removal of constraints against residential selection and the proliferation of high-speed urban freeways allow families to choose residential locations within virtually any metropolitan community they can afford. (4) Although comprehensive census data are not yet available for analyzing these new dimensions in home-workplace travel patterns, it is possible to acquire current work travel data from individual em- 28 Southeastern Geographer 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 COMMUTING DISTANCES FOR SUBURBAN MANUFACTURING EMPLOYEES Warner and Swazey, King of Prussia, Penna., 1973 • · .' .··. Figure I. 5 10152025303540 Distance in Miles...