Friction Analysis Summary
Although I inteded the index to be reflective of change, not static levels, the method was much more accurate on the macro level. The methodology, while admittedly rudimentary, succeeded in making sense of the population change experienced by so many communities. Clearly, on the macro level, population is increasing much more rapidly in the West. When analyzed in a predictive index, the trend seems to point towards land disputes in the West.
Due in part to data limitiations (I could not normalize the total acreage of counties by including only non-federal, or available, land) and the chaotic nature of dynamic systems, I did not see the pattern replicated on the micro level. Rather, the West was just as likely to experience land disputes (according to the FP Index) as other regions. However, when normalized through GIS by the proximity to federal lands, and the results allowed for a larger number of counties (and not just the outliers), the trend did again appear. Of the top 100 FPS scorers, almost 30% dropped out when normalized by federal lands. Of the top 500, 22% dropped out. Of the counties that dropped out, all were in regions other than the West.
Upon further examination, however, I found that looking at such a narrow band of counties was contradictory to what is intuitive about the West. It is young and growing, not established like the megalopolis of the Northeast. Therefore, it does not make sense for the growth to put Western counties at the top of the FPS list, but it does place many of them in the top quartile. Although conscious of the importance of scaling strucutres in analyzing dynamic systems, I failed to include this knowledge in my initial methodology. When corrected, the pattern replicated itself across the two scales.
With these caveats in mind, the map of the top 500 counties represents my prediction of where public disharmony is likely to arise due to land-use and availability issues. Not surprisingly, most identified counties surround major urban centers such as Salt Lake City or Albequerque.
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