Running the Numbers: A Practical Guide to Regional Economic and Social Analysis: 2014

A Practical Guide to Regional Economic and Social Analysis

John Quinterno

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317460664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Through use of practical examples and a plainspoken narrative style that minimises the use of maths, this book demystifies data concepts, sources, and methods for public service professionals interested in understanding economic and social issues at the regional level. By blending elements of a general interest book, a textbook, and a reference book, it equips civic leaders, public administrators, urban planners, nonprofit executives, philanthropists, journalists, and graduate students in various public affairs disciplines to wield social and economic data for the benefit of their communities. While numerous books about quantitative research exist, few focus specifically on the public sector. Running the Numbers, in contrast, explores a wide array of topics of regional importance, including economic output, demographics, business structure, labour markets, and income, among many others. To that end, the book stresses practical applications, minimises the use of maths, and employs extended, chapter-length examples that demonstrate how analytical tools can illuminate the social and economic workings of actual American regions.

1	Regional Geography

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The Research Triangle region of North Carolina stretches south from the tobacco fields along the Virginia border into the ancient dunes of the Sandhills, east from the hilly Piedmont onto the flat Atlantic coastal plain. With 1.8 million residents in 2011, the Research Triangle was the 27th-most populous consolidated metropolitan region in the United States and the second-most populous one in North Carolina.¹

Besides inhabiting a distinct physical space, residents of the Research Triangle share economic, social, political, and cultural ties that shape the patterns of daily life. For despite the capabilities of communications and transportation technologies to link people across the globe, humans remain physical, time-bound beings who are likely to define themselves in relation to the communities in which they live and work. Put simply, place matters.

People may grasp intuitively the idea of a region, but popular understandings typically lack the precision necessary for economic and social analysis. Think of all the ways of viewing the Research Triangle region: The area encompasses eight counties and four sizable cities, Raleigh (pop. 412,000), Durham (pop. 232,000), Cary (pop. 139,000), and Chapel Hill (pop. 58,000). Seven of the counties belong to one of two metropolitan statistical areas, and the remaining county is an individual micropolitan statistical area (see Map 1.1). Collectively the eight counties form a larger combined statistical area, which itself sits in a larger 13-county state economic development region. That region, in turn, functions as a single labor market containing six workforce development areas and five community college service districts. And the broad Research Triangle region is home to at least 64 incorporated municipalities, some of which are rural in character, others urban or suburban.²

What, then, is the Research Triangle, and which version of the region should a civic leader consider when attempting to reach decisions on behalf of the common good? A definition that is too narrow in scope will exclude relevant parts of a region, but a definition that is too broad will include extraneous areas. One solution is to beg the question and concentrate on governmental geographies like cities and counties, even though economic and social phenomena seldom follow political lines. A labor market study of Durham County that only included working-age residents of the county would miss the fact that, on average, half of the people who worked in the county between 2006 and 2008 commuted from other counties.³ When it comes to the labor market, the county lines are of little importance.

Source: U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Update of Statistical Area Definitions and Guidance on Their Uses (OMB Bulletin No. 10-02),” December 1, 2009, h­t­t­p­:­/­/­w­w­w­.w­h­i­t­e­h­o­u­s­e­.g­o­v­/­s­i­t­e­s­/­d­e­f­a­u­l­t­/­f­i­l­e­s­/­o­m­b­/­a­s­s­e­t­s­/­b­u­l­l­e­t­i­n­s­/­b­1­0­-­0­2­.p­d­f­. Map prepared by William High.

Map 1.1 Principal Cities and Component Counties of Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC Combined Statistical Area, 2009 Delineation

Such definitional problems are hardly unique to the Research Triangle. A threshold step in any study of regional economic and social issues therefore is defining the area of interest precisely enough for analytical purposes. To assist regional leaders in that task, this chapter introduces essential concepts related to regions and regional geography. The chapter begins by summarizing three ways of viewing regions, proceeds to describe the system of regional geography developed by the U.S. Census Bureau, and concludes with a discussion of practical considerations associated with defining regions. As a way of illustrating the topics, the chapter offers examples drawn from data for the Research Triangle region.

THREE WAYS OF PERCEIVING REGIONS

Scholars, developers, journalists, planners, and politicians frequently invoke “regions” and “regionalism” as justifications for any number of public policies and investments. Perhaps one reason the term enjoys such popularity is because it lacks a clear definition. Observers of a region indeed may “know it when [they] see it,” to misapply Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of obscenity, but such an elastic understanding is inappropriate for regional economic and social analysis.⁴

Few residents of the Research Triangle would deny that it is a region of some sort, but many would contest its boundaries and its degree of interconnectedness. The Research Triangle nevertheless is a region in that it is “an area within the national economy that is sufficiently comprehensive in structure that it can function independently, although of course in most practical circumstances it has strong links with the rest of the economy.”⁵ Yet even that definition is vague, and in response, observers tend to view regions from one of three perspectives: territorial, functional, or administrative.

Before describing each perspective, it is important to acknowledge that each one is more complex than its description implies. An exhaustive account is beyond this book’s scope, and the intention here is to provide a basic orientation to common ways of understanding regions. In practice, most regional studies blend the functional and administrative perspectives for reasons of feasibility and because civic leaders tend to think in terms of administrative structures. The exact mix of perspectives, however, hinges on the particular research questions and the availability of pertinent data.

TERRITORIAL PERSPECTIVE

The territorial perspective envisions a region as a “historically evolved, contiguous society that possesses a physical environment, a socioeconomic, political, and cultural milieu, and a spatial structure distinct from the other major territorial units, city, and nation.”⁶ The strength of this view is its recognition of the interplay between the physical environment and social dynamics. Regions are not simply discrete physical spaces, but rather the intricate products of economic and social interactions. Economic factors are particularly important in differentiating regions, as evidenced in the journalist Tom Wolfe’s observation about how when traveling by road in the United States “the only way you could tell you were leaving one community and entering another was when the franchises started repeating, and you spotted another 7-Eleven, another Wendy’s, another Costco, another Home Depot.”⁷

More seriously, besides separating regions from one another, economic factors structure social relationships among different segments of the population. Look at how the dominance of the automotive industry in Detroit long shaped not just the region’s economic activities, but also its local labor practices and social norms about what constituted—and who was entitled to—a middle-class lifestyle. The auto industry’s dominance further influenced other aspects of regional life, such as local politics, due to trade union activism, and the cultural scene, thanks to corporate and personal philanthropy.⁸ A similar dynamic has occurred in the Research Triangle region over the past half century in response to the growth, evolution, and decline of the technology and life science firms operating in the Research Triangle Park, a centrally located research campus.⁹

Source: Author’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Five-Year Estimates, 2006–2010; and U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Update of Statistical Area Definitions and Guidance on Their Uses (OMB Bulletin No. 10-02),” December 1, 2009, h­t­t­p­:­/­/­w­w­w­.w­h­i­t­e­h­o­u­s­e­.g­o­v­/­s­i­t­e­s­/­d­e­f­a­u­l­t­/­f­i­l­e­s­/­o­m­b­/­a­s­s­e­t­s­/­b­u­l­l­e­t­i­n­s­/­b­1­0­-­0­2­.p­d­f­. Map prepared by William High.

Map 1.2 Average Per Capita Income by County as a Share of Average per Capita Income in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC Combined Statistical Area, 2006–2010

When viewing a region in terms of territory, it is important to remember three things. First, a territorial region may or may not possess a distinct political identity. The Research Triangle region, for example, has neither an independent political existence nor any binding form of regional government. Second, territorial regions are dynamic in nature and change over time in response to economic and social forces. Finally, despite being located in the same general physical area, places within a region are not homogenous in character: intraregional differences exist because economic and social forces seldom exert uniform influences across an entire territory. During the period spanning 2006 to 2010, for instance, average per capita income in Wake County (Raleigh) was 11.5 percent higher than the level posted in the entire Research Triangle, but average per capita income in neighboring Franklin County (Louisburg) was 27 percent lower than the regional figure (see Map 1.2).¹⁰

FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

A second way of viewing a region is from a functional perspective. Central to this view is the notion that regions contain certain dominant cities or places (sometimes called nodes) that are tied to other, less dominant places within the area. A region therefore is a discrete spatial area containing interconnected places of differing sizes and types (e.g., town and country, farms and cities, central business districts and suburbs, residential communities and office parks). While the parts of a region may differ in terms of characteristics and functions, they share links that “can be identified through observation of flows of people, factors, goods, and communication.”¹¹

Commuting patterns are one manifestation of the functional relationships that exist within a region. Compare the typical commuting patterns of the residents of two counties in the Research Triangle—Orange (Chapel Hill) and Wake (Raleigh)—between 2006 and 2008 (see Map 1.3). During that period, Orange County was home to an average of 62,405 worki...