Telephone traffic is shown to be a reliable indicator of functional ties, with morning peak calls concentratedalong hierarchical pathways andevening peak calls more sensitive to population and distance. Traffic dispersion incident to each centre is systematically related to the size of the centre and to the size and spacing of interacting centres. Metropolitan orientation has a powerful effect on traffic dispersion in all situations and, in the more centralised states, negates the relationship between centre size and dispersion and converts the customary distance‐decay cones into an elevated surface of strong metropolitan orientation, broken by inverted cones around a few regional centres. Middle‐order nodal regions are delineated and intra‐regional flows analysed using primary linkage and standardised scores. Three distinctive systems of regional‐ordering are described, namely metropolitan‐dominated, provincial‐city dominated and mu
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