Functional Structure of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Based on the Analysis of Commuting and Consuming Activities

The metropolitan area has been regarded as a functional structure in sphere of daily activity level. This paper attempts to analyze the functional structure of the Tokyo metropolitan area by both commuting and consuming movements that are important behaviors of daily life.This study uses the person-trip survey because its data is one of the most suitable for daily activity analysis. First, the concentrated commuting or consuming movement zone is selected as “central nucleus” by the value of trip, and those by commuting is named “commuting nucleus” and those by consuming is named “consuming nucleus”. Second, those selected zones are grouped into seven categories by urban functions. Finally, commutation and consumer areas drawn by commuting and consuming nucleus are classified into four groups by thoselocations.The main findings are summarized as follows:1) The commuting nucleus tends to aggregate in the CBD and central place of suburban. In particular, the aggregation at central place is remarkable. On the other hand, those of consuming nucleus tend to disperse in the study area, and the aggregation like commuting nucleus is not appeared.2) When considering the rate of urban function at each central nucleus, those in the CBD tend to have much business functions and those in the suburb tend to have much residential functions. In addition, the rate of sum of business and residential functions occupies over half, and the relationship between them is symmetry.3) The large-scale commutation area whose nucleus locates in central place appears in terms of the commutation areas. In addition, the commutation areas whose sphere is relatively large appear in the suburban area. Thus, commutation structure is over concentrated and multipolar. About the consumer area, meanwhile, those scales are similar, and each area tends to be independent. Therefore, the consumer structure is independent and dispersed.