topic Beginner question: adjacent cities in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Beginner question: adjacent cities

QwertZuiopü — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 20:18:17 GMT

Hello all,

I don't know if such beginner's questions are wanted here (if not, please delete!), but I have a (hopefully simple) question: In the context of a seminar paper I work as an absolute beginner with GIS. I would like to represent for a whole country all large cities as well as the in each case adjacent cities. What is the easiest way to do this?
I have a dataset with all cities of the country including information about the number of inhabitants and other indicators and trends I want to look at. So the idea is to automatically identify cities adjacent to certain large cities.

(I would like to investigate if there is a correlation between certain trends in cities and the surrounding cities. For example, I'd like to examine whether population trends in cities adjacent to fast-growing large cities are similar or opposite to trends in the large city. I would like to conduct similar analyses with other socio-economic/demographic indicators).

Thanks and have a nice evening (and please excuse my bad English)!

Re: Beginner question: adjacent cities

JoeBorgione — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 20:53:17 GMT

To start with, beginners questions are always welcome, and your English needs no apologies!

Adjacent is a relative term in the context of GIS. It could mean that two cities share a border. Or it could mean that two cities are within a certain distance and are considered adjacent.

Either way, take a look at Select By Location this tool allows you to specify how you want to define adjacent.

Re: Beginner question: adjacent cities

DavidPike — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 21:29:50 GMT

This is an awesome tool https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/spatial-statistics/forestbasedclassificationregression.htm

Re: Beginner question: adjacent cities

Anonymous User — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 14:56:06 GMT

Joe is right, adjacent is a relative term in the context of GIS. To give you another tool that can be useful for projects like the one you are working one; you can use the Buffer tool to define a distance around the city you are looking at. For example you could set a buffer of 30 miles around your cities, this can be done with point or polygon data. You can then use the buffer as a selection method using the select by location tool that Joe mentioned, to select cities that are within the buffer you created.

Re: Beginner question: adjacent cities

MicZatorsky_AEC — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 23:24:18 GMT

Thiessen polygons can help visualize and identify "neighbors" (it assumes no barriers though)