Building geodemographic regions: commuting, productivity and uneven spatial development in England and Wales

We develop and apply a novel geodemographic classification of commuting flows to delineate 486 functional labour market areas (LMAs) across six commuter groups in England and Wales. Framed by the north–south divide, we then use settlement scaling to examine how economic and infrastructural agglomeration influence productivity, using the geodemographic LMAs as our base units. We find that disparities in mobility and infrastructure contribute to spatial productivity differences, with poorer intra-city connectivity in northern regions. Even among LMAs with similar commuter profiles, productivity diverges across the divide, highlighting how economic and infrastructural inequalities reinforce commuting interactions and regional productivity gaps.