Are commuting areas relevant for the delimitation of administrative regions in Denmark?

A functional economic region is a region in which, for example, most of the inhabitants also work. It is desirable that the administrative regions follow the functional regions. If not, tensions between different administrative regions can arise and planning problems occur. As a contribution to the discussion of municipality sizes in Denmark, the author has divided the country into functional economic regions. In the case of commuting areas, this has been carried out for two different points in time, i.e. 1980 and 1995. It is shown that the number of areas has decreased during the period. In addition, Denmark is divided into shopping areas, significantly more of which exist than commuting areas. The division has been conducted by applying a quite simple algorithm consisting of three steps. This is a combination of two algorithms presented in MILJOMINISTERIET (Ministry of Environment and Energy), 1994, and COOMBEs et al., 1986, respectively. The dependence of the constants inherent in the algorithm is illustrated and discussed.