Small town growth and metropolitan commuting: Evidence from united states daily urban systems

Metropolitan commuting has long been recognized as a major mechanism generating regional population increases. This paper examines the growth of small towns inside and outside the commuting areas of American daily urban systems (DUSs), 1960–1970. Nonparametric statistical procedures are used to test three size groups of small towns for expected increased growth within commuting areas and under the dominance of large DUS centers. National and Mountain states results do not uniformly support the hypothesis of polarized growth. For this decade, metropolitan commuting is only a partial explanation of small town growth.