Showing papers in "Geographical Review in 1965"

The Negro Ghetto: Problems and Alternatives

Abstract: G HETTOS," as we must realistically term the segregated areas occupied by Negroes and other minority groups, are common features of American urban life. The vast majority of Negroes, Japanese, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican-Americans are forced by a variety of pressures to reside in restricted areas, in which they themselves are dominant. So general is this phenomenon that not one of the hundred largest urban areas can be said to be without ghettos.' Inferiority in almost every conceivable material respect is the mark of the ghetto. But also, to the minority person, the ghetto implies a rejection, a stamp of inferiority, which stifles ambition and initiative. The very fact of residential segregation reinforces other forms of discrimination by preventing the normal contacts through which prejudice may be gradually overcome. Yet because the home and the neighborhood are so personal and intimate, housing will be the last and most difficult step in the struggle for equal rights. The purpose here is to trace the origin of the ghetto and the forces that perpetuate it and to evaluate proposals for controlling it. The Negro community of Seattle, Washington, is used in illustration of a simple model of ghetto expansion as a diffusion process into the surrounding white area. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the newest immigrants were accustomed to spend some time in slum ghettos of New York, Philadelphia, or Boston.2 But as their incomes grew and their English improved they moved out into the American mainstream, making way for the next group. During the nineteenth century the American Negro population, in this country from the beginning but accustomed to servitude, remained predominantly southern and rural. Relatively few moved to the North, and those who did move lived in small clusters about the cities. The Negro ghetto did not exist.3 Even in southern cities the Negroes, largely in the

Central American Rainfall

Abstract: U NTIL recently Central America has been sadly deficient in meteorological coverage. The situation was improved by Wernstedt's excellent collection of temperature and rainfall averages' from stations in Latin America and the Caribbean, among them 320 in Central America. But serious gaps still remain in northern Guatemala, eastern Honduras, most of Nicaragua, and parts of Panama. In the present paper Wernstedt has been supplemented by other sources,2 which have made it possible to extend the analyses into the areas mentioned, but future work will certainly modify these preliminary results. The complex terrain of Central Americarugged mountains, volcanic peaks, long serrate ridges, high plateaus, and narrow coastal plains-makes extrapolation and interpolation questionable, even for very short distances. Comparison of data and analyses presented here with earlier climatological studies may lead to the conclusion that we know less of Central America's climate at present than we knew a short time ago. This paradox arises because several principles formerly used in interpolation to bridge observational gaps have been shattered by new evidence, but this same new evidence is not sufficient to formulate better principles. Central America is an open field for climatological research. Since temperature and winds are less variable in tropical countries than

Industrialization, Initial Advantage, and American Metropolitan Growth

Abstract: T HE spatial, as well as the economic and social, processes of nineteenthand twentieth-century urbanization and industrialization are not independent. The phenomena that led to the concurrent emergence of the modern American metropolis and large-scale manufacturing are dynamically involuted and nearly always inseparable.' Urbanization, as in the case of Washington, D. C., is not inexorably associated with industrial growth;2 yet, conversely, the multiplication of factories, product output, and markets since 1860 is virtually synonymous with city development. That the largest urban concentrations have played a monumental role in American industrial expansion is underscored by the fact that, in 1961, 37.5 percent of the nation's value added by manufacture was accounted for by ten metropolises, which in turn contained 27.0 percent of the total 1960 population.3 The complex reciprocals of urbanization and industrialization are crucial girders in the superstructure of economic growth. Perhaps because capital formation and investment are viewed as this entity's most significant components, economists and others have logically and legitimately emphasized their part in the growth process, and have conducted only limited theoretical inquiries into the spatial interaction of urban and manufacturing growth.4 Within this context, the concentration of much of American manufacturing and population in ten metropolises leads one to pose at least two basic ques-

The Management Center in the United States

Abstract: IN THE literature on the classification of cities little or no attention has been given to management per se or to management centers. A recent bibliography of central-place studies,' which lists the significant studies of tertiary activities, does not contain among its more than five hundred entries a single reference explicitly to management centers; and neither this work nor the extensive bibliographies in Isard's "Methods of Regional Analysis"2 make any mention of management functions. Among the better-known functional classifications of cities, none appears to regard management as a separate function. Harris3 states that his classification "is based on the activity of greatest importance in each city." Functional importance, in the Harris classification, is measured mainly by the number of people employed in each industry. Harris recognizes nine classes of cities but does not include management among their activities. More recently, Nelson has also presented a functional classification of American cities,4 based, like Harris's, on United States census categories. Although Nelson includes a wider range of activities than Harris, he makes no mention of management as a separate category. Alexandersson,5 in his

Disintegration of Nucleated Settlement in Eastern Nigeria

Abstract: ANALYSIS of the settlement pattern of Eastern Nigeria reveals that nucleated settlements characterize the periphery, and dispersed dwellings-or compounds, as they are called in Nigeria-the center (Fig. i). In many areas the dispersed compounds reflect a decentralized local social organization, but everywhere they are a product of the gradual disintegration of a nucleated settlement. The present paper traces the ways in which an increasing demand for farmland, due to an increase in population, has, by modifying or completely changing local ideas about the land, aided the dispersal of compounds. Other factors that have contributed to settlement disintegration in the Eastern Region are also considered, and an assessment is made of the recent attempts at village integration in Abakaliki Province. The diagrammatic representation of the step-by-step disintegration of particular settlements is handicapped by a lack of written records or old maps. Oral evidence and personal observation in the Cross River area point to nucleation as the primary form of settlement in the Eastern Region. The forest tribes of this area live in compact settlements. Goldie' has described them as representing the fragments of an earlier world, and Talbot2 has given a more vivid picture of their primitive surroundings. For our purpose they may be regarded as survivals of the cultural past of Eastern Nigeria. The close grouping of habitation was necessary for the smooth operation of the traditional block-farming system, which consisted in the periodic cultivation of different parts, or blocks, of the territory belonging to a village. Grouping was also necessary for defense. Often the villages of a village group were sited at close quarters, but in such a way that they could expand without much friction. They were positioned around a central meeting place, the community square, from which radiated, like the sectors of a circle, the lands belonging to them. The sectors extended to the limits of the group territory (Fig. 3). The block-farming system was itself a product of the local ideas about the land, two of which are relevant to this study. In the first place, it was held that land belonged to the whole community-the living, the dead, and the

The All-Negro Town: Its Evolution and Function

Abstract: PHENOMENON that appears to have eluded urban geographers, urban sociologists, and others concerned with community development is the all-Negro town in the United States.' The existence of such towns has seldom come to the attention of persons who are not living near them, and the few previous works on the subject have generally focused attention on a single place. One of the objectives of the present study is to identify the universe of all-Negro towns on an operational basis; another is to detect the effects of socioeconomic development on their form and structure. The term "all-Negro town" as it is here used applies to all places with a population of 1000 or more of whom more than 95 percent are classified as nonwhite. This percentage was thought to be a rational cutoff level, for the presence of whites at 5 percent or less might be thought to represent a random occurrence. Within the limits of this definition nineteen places were identified as all-Negro towns (Fig. 1). On closer investigation of the data it was found that seven of them were statistical illusions. They are not separate places physically or politically but are nonpolitical appendages of larger places. However, instead of being completely ignored, they are retained and identified as "pseudo towns." The remaining twelve places, which are physically or politically separated from their nearest neighbors, constitute the primary focus of this study. In most of them the white population is less than 1 percent, and in none of them are whites in positions of dominance.2

The Distribution of Selected Castes in the North Indian Plain

Abstract: IT HE institution of caste, as a steadily mounting body of social-science literature attests, retains a fundamental role in contributing to the character of Indian rural society.2 Despite the gradual weakening of the caste system in an urban setting, it continues to exert a major influence in shaping the lives of the nation's 375 million villagers, including a large number of Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians, to whom caste is theoretically anathema.3 Birth into a particular caste, be it high or low, is the cardinal element of one's karma-that is, reward or punishment for deeds performed in previous earthly existences. In the Indian view, which regards reincarnation as axiomatic, karma is both just and immutable. To play one's proper role in

Shell Roads in Texas

Abstract: S ONE approaches a coastline from inland it becomes evident at some indefinable point that the shore is not far distant. This vague but nonetheless real feeling is due, no doubt, to several factors, such as increased relative humidity and perhaps a salt tang in the air. In much of the southern United States, and particularly in Texas, this awareness of coastal proximity is heightened by a subtle change in the landscape. Where driveways, parking lots, and side lanes were reddish brown, they are now a gleaming white (Figs. 1 and 2), dazzling in the glare of the noonday sun or softly glowing in the darkest night from the reflected light of the stars. Gravel has been replaced by shells, and the change indicates that one is not far from salt water.

Migration and Settlement in the Peruvian Montana: The Apurimac Valley

Abstract: FOR some time growth of the population in highland Peru has been outdistancing the resources available for its support. Natural increase among the largely Indian population of the sierra has not been matched by expanding agricultural production. On the contrary, archaic latifundia continue to monopolize the best lands, and primitive methods of cultivation become progressively less rewarding. The traditional safety valve for the surplus population of the highlands has been the irrigated oases of the desert coast. In the last few decades, however, migration from the sierra has far exceeded the absorptive capacity of the coastal plantations, and the stream of highland emigres has been directed increasingly toward the coastal cities, particularly Lima. The appalling slums (barriadas) that ring the capital city are conclusive evidence that the urban habitat is equally incapable of accommodating the surplus. Inevitably, attention has turned to Peru's part of the Amazon selva, the iontoana, as a source of relief for the acute population pressure of the coast and the sierra. Professional opinion is sharply divided on the settlement value of the montafia, and Peruvian geographers and planners tend to emphasize problems rather than prospects. Yet even the most pessimistic authorities agree that on the margins of the Amazon Basin, at intermediate altitudes, there still remains a large reservoir of potentially productive land, and it is with respect to this region that interest in pioneer settlement is currently the most active.