As information and telecommunication technologies provide us
with more flexible working habits and transportation allows us
an ever increasing geographical reach, a new phenomenon is
emerging in contemporary America: extreme commuting. In the
past, the distance between our home and work location used to be
just a few miles or tens of miles; today, an increasing number
of Americans regularly cover distances of 100 miles or more to
commute to work several times a month. These maps, created using
aggregated, anonymous data from the AT&T cellphone network,
depict commuting patterns in eight major US urban areas. As one
can see, basins of attraction are so large that they start to
overlap, covering the whole country: the United Cities of
America. Featured in Esquire.