The Geography of Commuting: The Netherlands and Belgium

G EOGRAPHICAL studies of the journey to work' have concentrated on two questions: the commuting range of individual cities, and the structure of the commutation area. A further question concerns what may be called the of the working population-the degree to which employed persons in the smallest administrative area travel daily to and from places of work beyond the boundaries of that area. It is impossible to make any systematic analysis of the regional mobility of labor in the United States because the census reports do not include the necessary information. A census of workplaces was taken in England and Wales in 1921 by rural and urban districts, but it was not repeated until 1951. In the United States such a census is generally regarded as fantastic, yet the data are urgently needed for the understanding of what we all recognize to be one of the nation's greatest domestic problems. Several European countries make census returns of the journey to work down to the smallest administrative unit, and it is these returns that are the basis of this essay. Attention is confined to the Netherlands and Belgium; a future article will deal with Germany. Terms must first be defined. The terms Pendler and Pendelverkehr were devised by H. J. Losch in his report on the 1900 census of Wiirttemberg. The corresponding terms now used in the Netherlands are forensen and forensenverkeer, in Belgium and France actifs sortants and actifs entrants or migrations alternantes de residence et de travail. The objective of such a census is to record the place of work and the place of residence of every employed person. These are normally classified in the published returns for each gemeente (Netherlands), commune (Belgium and France), and Gemeinde (Germany), with some variations, as follows: (1) the people who work in the gemeente but live outside it, the in-commuters (werkforensen, Netherlands; entrants, Belgium; Einpendler, Germany); (2) the people who live in the gemeente but work outside it, the out-commuters (woonforensen, sortants, Auspendler); (3) the people who both live and work in the gemeente, resident workers; (4) the total number of workers who live in the gemeente (2 plus 3); and (5) the total number of workers in the gemeente (I plus 3). Some