Urban Scaling and Effects of Municipal Boundaries

TL;DR

This study investigates how municipal boundaries influence urban socio-economic performance by affecting commuting networks, revealing significant boundary effects especially between urban and rural areas, which may impact regional economic development.

Contribution

First empirical analysis of municipal boundary effects on urban scaling and commuting networks using spatially weighted modeling in the Randstad region.

Findings

Municipal borders significantly affect inter-municipal commuting patterns.

Boundaries between urban and rural areas show strong correlation with commuting disruptions.

Regional differences in boundary effects may explain economic divergence within the Randstad.

Abstract

Urban scaling, the superlinear increase of social and economic measures with increasing population, is an ubiquitous and well-researched phenomenon. This article is focused on socio-economic performance scaling, which could possibly be driven by increasing returns of the spatial size and density of interaction networks. If this is indeed the case, we should also find that spatial barriers to interaction affect scaling and cause local performance deviations. Possible barring effects of municipal boundaries are particularly interesting from the perspective of urban area governance policy and regional cooperation. To our best knowledge, this is the first study on this politically relevant and strongly disputed subject. We test the hypothesis of possible barring effects of municipal boundaries by correlating municipal boundaries with the structure of commuter networks within a large densely urbanized region, the Randstad in The Netherlands. The measured network impacts of these boundaries are subsequently correlated with local employment deviations. In order to spatially pinpoint correlations, we apply advanced spatially weighted modelling technique. We find that municipal borders have significant effects on inter-municipal commuting. Moreover we can indicate the specific effect of individual municipal borders precisely on the map. The results show particularly significant correlations along dividing lines between large urban agglomerations and rural communities. The southern part of the Randstad is more fragmented by such dividing lines than the northern part, which could partly explain the diverging economic development between the two parts.