The European Union uses something called the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (or NUTS) in order to geographically subdivide its member states and collect statistical data. There are three scales: NUTS 1, 2, and 3. And generally speaking, they follow existing administrative boundaries. Or at least that's the goal.

In addition to being used for collecting statistical data, they also form the basis for how the EU implements its "cohesion policies", which are designed to direct funds toward less developed regions within the Union based on GDP per capita (PPP).

Because these NUTS impact funding allocations and because they can be redrawn if certain criteria are met, there's not surprisingly an incentive to gerrymander. The Pudding has a great visual essay that explains why this happens and how Hungary split its central region into two new ones, isolating its capital, Budapest.

Big cities tend to be, of course, more developed than their surrounding areas. But it is interesting to see by how much. Though an extreme outlier, the Inner London - West region has a GDP per capita that is 625% the EU average (2017 numbers).

Image: The Pudding

I recently wrote about this visual essay – showing the world’s population – from The Pudding.

They have some great essays. So I went exploring today. 

Here is one that looks at the phenomenon of “poor-country urbanization” by way of the number of flights per day from a city.

The argument is that a low number of daily flights means that the city, despite perhaps having a large number of people, is actually quite disconnected from the global economy.

Typically, people moving from rural areas to urban areas has tended to translate into rising incomes. It has lifted people out of poverty.

But today we’re seeing examples of poor urbanization, where the migration is less about opportunity and more about necessity.

While maybe crude, this measuring stick of flights per day piqued my curiosity. So here are some preliminary figures from the Airports Council International for 2017:

The primary example mentioned in the essay is that of Kinshasa, which is the capital of the DRC. 

It has a population of around 13 million people, but only 13 departing flights per day. (I’m assuming its “total movements” would be higher.)

Based on the above list, ATL has ~2,461 total movements per day (defined as an aircraft either landing or taking-off). And YYZ has ~1,275 movements per day.