The urban core is the nucleus of the metropolitan area and its health is vital to regional economic success. Certain functions happen best and only in dense cores. Urban services and social function are better in cities with strong cores. S
Ratio of PCI in core to metro from CV
The measures presented in this report all describe the overall performance of a metropolitan area. But the city is the center and focal point of a metropolitan are, and we know that urban form is critical to a healthy, well-functioning metropolitan area. Vibrant metropolitan areas have strong centers that are hubs of economic, social and cultural activity. Strong urban cores attract and develop talent, make businesses more productive, foster creativity and innovation, are greener and more sustainable and provide more opportunities for all of its residents. And as market demand for vibrant urban neighborhoods continues to grow, strong core cities will be critical to helping achieve key national objectives.
Why is the urban core important to metropolitan economies?
A healthy urban core reinforces the success of a regional economy. Cities with dense, economically diverse, close-in urban neighborhoods play key roles in assimilating immigrants, making transit work better, providing affordable housing, promoting economic opportunity, strengthening civic participation and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. A struggling or unattractive core is a liability to the entire metropolitan area.
In short, metropolitan areas are not formless blobs. Having a vital urban core is essential to the effective functioning of metropolitan areas. The geographic shape of a metropolitan economy matters greatly to its success and efficiency. A sprawling “pancake” metropolitan area imposes high costs on its citizens for infrastructure and travel costs and produces greater economic segregation. A “donut” metropolitan area—one with a weak center—can’t achieve the critical mass needed to drive economic success.
How is the urban core defined?
There are a variety of ways to define the urban core. Individual cities often have their own local, traditional definitions of what constitutes the downtown. Many studies compare values for the “central city”—typically the larges t municipality in a metropolitan area—to the overall values for the metropolitan statistical area. But, municipal boundaries are a poor choice for making comparisons among metropolitan areas because central cities vary substantially across metropolitan areas. Some central municipalities account for a majority of their metropolitan area’s residents and include some areas that would be commonly thought of as suburban, while central municipalities are less than 20 percent of a region’s population. Consequently, following an approach developed by Ed Glaeser, we define the urban core as the area within three miles of the center of the central business district http://www.brook.edu/es/bwpua/99papers/bwpua5.pdf.
How are data for core areas computed?
Census tracts—neighborhoods averaging about 4,000 persons—are the key building blocks for estimating economic and demographic characeteristics of the nation’s urban cores. The aggregated five-year totals of the American Community Survey (ACS) provide sufficient sample size to make reliable estimates at the Census Tract level. Analysts use this ACS data and Geographic Information System (GIS) software to estimate values inside the three-mile ring drawn around the center of the central business district of the most populous city in each metropolitan area. Because the data are drawn from surveys fielded over five years, they do not reflect the values for any particular year, but rather represent the average level of each value over the five-year period.
What are the markers of core industry success?
One key marker of a strong urban core is the educational attainment of its residents. The educational attainment of the urban core plays a disproportionate role in determining the educational attainment of the metropolitan area. Richard Florida’s analysis shows those metropolitan areas with the biggest education differentials in favor of the urban core have the highest overall levels of metropolitan educational attainment. Conversely, those areas with the weakest cores, relative to their suburbs, have the lowest levels of metropolitan educational attainment .
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/08/the-us-brainpower-map/60641/
The four-year college attainment rate is a benchmark measure of talent. This indicator counts the fraction of those age 25 and older, who have completed at least a four-year college degree. Metro areas vary widely on this measure. Fewer than nine percent of urban core residents in Las Vegas have completed a four-year degree, compared to more than 65 percent of those living in New York’s urban core. Overall, educational attainment is typically lower in the urban core than in the mtropolitan area, but two-fifths of all metropolitan areas have higher education attainment in close-in urban neighborhoods. New York and Chicago have much higher educational attainment in the urban core (85 percent and 98 percent than their surrounding metro areas, respectively). Portland, Seattle and Atlanta also have substantially higher levels of educational attainment in the urban core than in the remainder of the region. Several cities have relatively very low levels of educational attainment in the urban core. Las Vegas and San Antonio have college attainment rates in the urban core that are, on average, less than half those in their metro areas.
How does the urban core affect travel patterns?
The size of a region’s population living in the urban core has a major influence on the transportation demand in a metropolitan area. Urban cores have the highest levels of walkability, the shortest average commute trips, and the highest levels of transit accessibility.
Walkability maps compiled by Walk Score, show that residents living in urban cores have many more common destinations located within walking distances of their homes http://www.walkscore.com/NY/New_York
New transit accessibility maps prepared by David Levinson and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota show that residents of close in urban neighborhoods in every metropolitan area have the highest levels of accessibility to jobs via transit http://access.umn.edu/research/america/transit2014/
Because so many destinations are close at hand, and they have good access to jobs, central city residents tend to have much shorter average commute times than other metropolitan residents