Refining the Air Traffic Approach to City Networks

Abstract

Despite embracing the concept of networks to help explain the organisation of modern urban systems, measurement has presented an overriding challenge to researchers: how can linkages between cities be operationalised? Airline traffic data have been proposed as a promising solution, but these data introduce their own complications. In this paper, the Airline Origin and Destination Survey is used to refine this approach, distinguishing first between hub/spoke and origin/destination networks and, secondly, between networks of business-oriented and leisure-oriented travel among 115 US metropolitan areas in 2006. After illustrating the importance of these distinctions with employment data from the American Community Survey, the resulting and more narrowly focused business network is used to test a model of urban economic flows. Results suggest that the volume of business exchanges between US cities is a function of the cities’ own attributes and as well as relational factors including economic similarity.