Melisa Abalos Choque, Dusan Paredes Araya

A modification to the varimax method for delimiting Functional Urban Areas using spatial contiguity

Social and economic interaction among small spatial units is a phenomenon that has undoubtedly become more and more persistent in time. This implies that labor markets expand through space mainly due to the continuous decrease of transport costs. Thus, greater interaction among spatial units suggests the potential existence of macro labor markets labeled as functional regions. Building functional regions for Chile is a challenge owing to the role played by the localization of natural resources, thus resulting in long-distance commutation. This document contributes to the construction of Functional Urban Regions (FUR) using Intramax method for the case of Chile. In addition, an alternative is proposed to include the effects of long-distance commutation. Results show that FURs built from Intramax algorithm that incorporate process long-distance commutation criteria show greater benefits.

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