Switzerland as a Single Metropolitan Area? A Study of its Commuting Network

Out of the many ingredients that together build urban areas, three deserve particular consideration as their relationship is evolving: the functional centrality, the morphology of built-up areas and the way of life. Those three characteristics do not necessarily match along territorial lines anymore. To overcome this limitation, this article suggests approaching urbanity in terms of cohesion. To illustrate this approach under a specific analytical point of view, the paper describes a cohesion index based on the commuter relationships between the Swiss communes from 1970 to 2000. For 2000, further distinction is made between car-based and public transport-based commuting patterns, which allowed discrimination between two scales of cohesiveness between the Swiss agglomerations.

[1]  L. Freeman.  Research Methods in Social Network Analysis , 1991 .

[2]  J. Vance.  The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization , 1990 .

[3]  K. Small,et al.  URBAN SPATIAL STRUCTURE. , 1997 .

[4]  W. Alonso.  Location And Land Use , 1964 .

[5]  R. Cervero.  America's Suburban Centers: The Land Use-Transportation Link , 1989 .

[6]  C. Avgerou.  The Informational City: Information Technology Economic Restructuring and the Urban Regional Process , 1991 .

[7]  G. Giuliano,et al.  SUBCENTERS IN THE LOS ANGELES REGION , 1991 .

[8]  Mark E. J. Newman.  A measure of betweenness centrality based on random walks , 2005, Soc. Networks.

[9]  Dominic Stead,et al.  The Relationships between Urban Form and Travel Patterns. An International Review and Evaluation , 2001, European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research.

[10]  J. Odland.  THE CONDITIONS FOR MULTI-CENTER CITIES , 1978 .

[11]  Bruce W. Hamilton,et al.  Wasteful Commuting , 1982, Journal of Political Economy.

[12]  H W Richardson,et al.  The Distribution of Population and Employment in a Polycentric City: The Case of Los Angeles , 1986, Environment & planning A.

[13]  R. Muth,et al.  Cities and Housing. , 1970 .

[14]  M. Castells.  The rise of the network society , 1996 .

[15]  Peter J. Taylor,et al.  World Cities: A First Multivariate Analysis of their Service Complexes , 2001 .

[16]  Walter Christaller.  Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland , 1980 .

[17]  Andreas Wittel.  Toward a Network Sociality , 2001 .

[18]  Philippe Thalmann,et al.  Locataire ou propriétaire , 2002 .

[19]  P. Gordon,et al.  Gender Differences in Metropolitan Travel Behaviour , 1989 .

[20]  J. Mcdonald.  The identification of urban employment subcenters , 1987 .

[21]  Masahisa Fujita,et al.  Multiple equilibria and structural transition of non-monocentric urban configurations , 1982 .

[22]  J. Gottmann,et al.  Megalopolis or the Urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard , 1957 .

[23]  H. Hofmeister.  Geographic mobility of couples in the United States: relocation and commuting trends , 2005 .

[24]  SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SEGREGATION OF URBAN TRANSPORTATION: THE MERITS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE SWISS CITIES MODEL , 2004 .

[25]  John F. McDonald,et al.  Employment Subcenters and Land Values in a Polycentric Urban Area: The Case of Chicago , 1990 .

[26]  D. Joye,et al.  Les niveaux géographiques de la Suisse , 2005 .

[27]  Joel Garreau.  Edge City: Life on the New Frontier , 1991 .

[28]  B. Derudder,et al.  World City Network: A global urban analysis , 2003 .

[29]  J. Dürrschmidt,et al.  Everyday Lives in the Global City: The Delinking of Locale and Milieu , 2000 .

[30]  T. J. Baerwald.  The Emergence of a New "Downtown" , 1978 .

[31]  Roger Diener,et al.  Switzerland - an Urban Portrait , 2005 .

[32]  Peter Hall,et al.  The global city , 2010 .

[33]  Kathy Pain,et al.  The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from Mega-City Regions in Europe , 2009 .

[34]  Bruce W. Hamilton,et al.  Wasteful Commuting Again , 1989, Journal of Political Economy.

[35]  Carol E. Hoffecker,et al.  Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States , 1987 .