Cycles within the System: Metropolitanisation and Internal Migration in the US, 1965-90

Abstract

This paper uses a typology of local metropolitan development to examine population redistribution trends in the US over the past three decades. Theories of systemic maturation and urban life-cycles are discussed and evaluated. Analysis of population and inter-county migration data reveals that localised deconcentration has become an increasingly common sub-process of metropolitanisation, but that this sub-process cannot be fully explained by a life-cycle model of metropolitan development. More importantly, results indicate that metro-based migration varies significantly with local patterns of metropolitanisation. The nature of this variation implies that declining metropolitan areas tend to redistribute migrants to relatively distant metropolitan and non-metropolitan territory in a manner consistent with extended processes of population deconcentration.