Abstract
A significant theme in demographic studies has been the population redistribution patterns among metropolitan centers, non-metropolitan areas surrounding them, and the so-called hinterlands beyond. Virtually all of this research has used the traditional metropolitan vs. non-metropolitan classification scheme. However, this classification system has a number of inherent flaws concerning the identification of rural and urban areas. Our previous research, for instance, has shown that metro areas are highly heterogeneous in terms of characteristics typifying “rural” and “urban” (Porter and Howell 2009). This study aims to partially alleviate the problem through the implementation of a new sub-county geography, the Non-Place Territory (NPT) combined with a spatial decomposition method for combining county and place-level data. The NPT is simply the balance of the county not designated as a census place or, in other words, the local expression of “out in the county”. Through the use of this geography and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we spatially decompose population growth in the U.S at the sub-county level using 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 census population data applied to a unified place vs. non-place territory GIS coverage. Through the application of exploratory spatial data analysis procedures, we identify sub-county patterns of population distribution and redistribution over the three decades of interest. The results identify statistically significant pockets of growth, stability, and decline within counties across metropolitan and non-metropolitan localities. This approach and these results pave the way for a more contextual understanding of population redistribution in the U.S.
Direct all communications to: Frank M. Howell, frankmhowell@gmail.com or Jeremy R. Porter, jporter@brooklyn.cuny.edu. Several students in the Spatial Analysis of Social Data course taught by the first author in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Mississippi State University made helpful suggestions contributing to this chapter. Any errors of fact or interpretation, however, are those of the authors.
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Notes
- 1.
The Geographic Areas Reference Manual from the U.S. Census Bureau says that these place “births & deaths” may take place for a number of reasons including consolidation, annexation, or detachment. In all, place births and deaths made up less than 3 % of the units.
- 2.
The k nearest neighbors approach identifies a theoretically grounded number of meaningful neighbors based on locality centroids and Euclidean distance (Anselin 1995).
- 3.
For sensitivity purposes, the analyses were run with k = 2, 3, and 4. k = 4 was ultimately chosen based on the balance between meaningful significant results compared to k = 2 and k = 4. Distance based and contiguity based matricies were tested as well with the k-nearest neighbors approach ultimately proving to be the most theoretically and empirically appropriate definition tool.
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Porter, J.R., Howell, F.M. (2016). A Spatial Decomposition of County Population Growth in the United States: Population Redistribution in the Rural-to-Urban Continuum, 1980–2010. In: Howell, F., Porter, J., Matthews, S. (eds) Recapturing Space: New Middle-Range Theory in Spatial Demography. Spatial Demography Book Series, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22810-5_10
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