Showing papers on "Metropolitan area published in 1986"

The distribution of population and employment in a polycentric city: the case of Los Angeles.

Abstract: The distribution of population and employment in metropolitan Los Angeles in 1970 and 1980 is examined in this paper. Population continued to disperse in the 1970s, whereas the geographical distribution of employment combined job clustering around a few major employment centers with a high degree of general job dispersion. In Los Angeles polycentrism has been associated with shorter work trips, particularly intracounty trips in the more peripheral counties.

Residential segregation in American cities: a review and interpretation

Abstract: Significant levels of separation between blacks and whites still exist in large American cities, and debate about the causes of that residential separation has been considerable. A balanced analysis of the factors that might explain residential segregation - economic status (affordability), social preferences, urban structure, and discrimination - suggests that no one factor can account for the patterns that have arisen in U.S. metropolitan areas. Empirical estimation of the impact of economic status suggests that 30–70 percent of racial separation is attributable to economic factors. However, economic factors do not act alone, but in association explanatory weight for present residential patterns. Survey evidence from both national and local studies shows that black households prefer neighborhoods that are half black and half white, while whites prefer neighborhoods ranging from 0 to 30 percent black. The debate about causes seems most polarized over the role of discrimination. Although comments in the literature often focus on the past use of racially restrictive covenants by state-regulated agencies and discriminatory acts by realtors and financial institutions, the documented individual cases of discrimination do not appear to be part of a massive collusion to deny housing opportunities to minorities. A review of the evidence from social science investigations demonstrates that there are multiple causes of racial residential separation in U.S. metropolitan areas.

Transportation and urban form: stages in the spatial evolution of the american metropolis

Abstract: The movement of people, goods, and information within the local metropolitan area is critically important to the functioning of cities This chapter reviews the US urban experience of the past two-centuries and traces a persistently strong relationship between the intraurban transportation system and the spatial form and organization of the metropolis Following an overview of the cultural foundations of urbanism in the United States, the chapter then introduces a four-stage model of intrametropolitan transport eras and associated growth patterns Within that framework, it becomes clear that a distinctive spatial structure dominated each stage of urban transportation development and that geographical re-organization swiftly followed the break-through in movement technology that launched the next era of metropolitan expansion Finally, the chapter briefly considers the contemporary scene, both as an evolutionary composite of the past and as a dynamic arena where new forces ma already be forging a decidedly different future

Community Careers in Crime

Abstract: Urban ecologists have documented the stages through which residential communities in American metropolitan areas move as they undergo physical and social deterioration. Criminologists have documented the roles of deteriorated urban neighborhoods as areas of high rates of crime and delinquency. Less is known about how neighborhoods evolve into high-crime areas. Using a developmental model, this research investigated the twenty-year histories of Los Angeles County's highest-crime-rate neighborhoods in 1970. Three distinct stages were identified: emerging, transitional, and enduring. Use of cross-sectional and time-series analyses revealed that neighborhood deterioration precedes rising crime early in the cycle but that, as neighborhoods move into the later enduring stage, rising crime rates precede further neighborhood deterioration. Among the changes signaling neighborhood deterioration and rising crime rates were a shift from single- to multiple-family dwellings, a rise in residential mobility, unrelated ...

Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience

Abstract: Iain Chambers approaches the often overlooked details and textures of popular culture through a series of histories which show how it becomes continually remade as each of us defines our own urban space.

Metropolitan Structure and Criminal Violence

Abstract: This article re-examines the conclusions of an earlier paper (Blau and Blau. 1982); i.e., that racial inequality in metropolitan places increases criminal violence and is accountable for various fa...

Fragmentation and the growth of local government

Abstract: An assumption of the post-World War II metropolitan reform movement was that fragmentation of metropolitan regions into multiple local governments was wasteful and inefficient, increasing the cost and size of government. More recently, ‘polycentrists’ have argued that the competition between multiple governments in metropolitan regions can in factreduce the growth in government by providing a competitive check on the excessive demands of local bureaucrats for more resources. In this article, I explore the effects of fragmentation on growth in the size of suburban municipal government budgets and in the number of services offered. Competition inherent in more fragmented metropolitan regions is shown to slow the expansion in local government expenditures and service levels.

The Myth of the North American City: Continentalism Challenged

Abstract: On comparing American and Canadian cities Values and culture: a context for comparing American and Canadian cities Social and demographic structures in Canada and the United States Economic organization and economic institutions in Canada and the United States: the fuel for urban growth and change Political structure, culture and institutions in Canada and the United States Urban form and institutions in Canada and the United States Urban form and social characteristics Urban local government: structure and finance A multivariate approach to metropolitan differences Making plain the difference.

Economic Conditions, Neighborhood Organization, and Urban Crime

Abstract: Analyses of neighborhoods and their role in urban decline and revival, and mainstream sociological theories of crime, have focused attention on neighborhood crime and crime control patterns. Although much has been learned from such work, the effects of economic change on neighborhood social organization have not been taken into account. For example, poor local economic conditions and inadequate participation in the labor market can both cause and result from social disruption. The Vera Institute of Justice recently conducted a study of the effects of metropolitan labor markets and housing patterns on high-crime neighborhoods. Survey and ethnographic research among three Brooklyn, New York, neighborhoods indicated that persistent unemployment among adult residents limited the development of stable households and youth employment opportunities. The resulting lack of informal social controls contributed to the persistence of crime in some poor urban neighborhoods. Property crime, drug sales, and other illegal activities provided income to youths in neighborhoods where legitimate employment options were scarce or provided low wages and sporadic hours. Public policy on crime control in poor neighborhoods has concentrated on providing delinquents with vocational training. The results have not been encouraging, however. Community action programs, inspired by the Mobilization for Youth program, attempted more profound social reforms and met with varying degrees of success. Language: en

An Evaluation of Hedonic Price Indexes for Thirty‐four Large SMSAs

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, a set of price indexes are developed for thirty-four metropolitan areas for the years 1975 and 1978. Indexes are also broken down by central city and suburb for twenty two of the metropolitan areas. These indexes measure variation in the price per unit of owner-occupied housing stock and the price per unit of housing services of rental housing. Confidence intervals are constructed for the price indexes. It is found that the indexes are reasonably precise measures in that the typical ratio of the confidence interval to the predicted median rent or value is about 13%. Also, analysis of the confidence intervals indicates substantial and statistically significant variation in the price of housing stock and services among the metropolitan areas studied. One of the major benefits of this set of indexes is that it can be used to address one of the most important questions in real estate — Why do housing prices and rents vary among metropolitan areas and over time? Research projects are currently underway that use the data to address these two questions.

Multinucleation in Metropolitan Economies

Abstract: Metropolitan form has changed significantly over the past few decades; economic activities are increasingly concentrated in suburban nucleations. In this paper I specify models of the multinucleation process on the basis of the investment decisions of business firms in different economic sectors. Regression analysis is used to explain the changing density of business establishments with data for suburban municipalities in the Boston, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA's. Variables reflecting land costs, freeway access, market growth, and the effects of agglomeration and competition are important explanatory factors in many cases. I also specify a model of the number of suburban employment nucleations and test it using cross-sectional data for 31 metropolitan places. The metropolitan income base, suburban employment density, suburban share of MSA land area, and velocity of movement are important explanatory variables. The geographic spacing of nucleations is also explored; the results of time...

Corporate Spatial Links With Financial Institutions: The Role of the Metropolitan Hierarchy

Abstract: This study focuses on the spatial linkages between major U.S. corporations and financial institutions. The results support the hypothesis that corporations reach up the metropolitan hierarchy for banking services, i.e., they are more strongly linked with higher-order centers than with lowerorder metropolitan areas. A second hypothesis, also confirmed, is that larger corporations are more strongly tied to the upper end of the metropolitan hierarchy than are smaller firms. Although some elements of banking are located in the same metropolitan area as the corporate headquarters that use their services, a significant component of banking services—especially investment and foreign banking—involves intermetropolitan linkages. These linkages are national rather than regional and do not follow the traditional distance-decay model.

Metropolitan management : the Asian experience

Abstract: This is a study of the management problems experienced by selected metropolitan cities in South and East Asia and of the approaches adopted in resolving them. Although the region contains many of the world's developing countries, it is not an exception to the universal trends in urbanization, which have had a massive impact on its metropolitan cities. Apart from Tokyo, the cities concerned tend to dominate the economic and political scene in their respective countries, but for the purposes of this discussion it is not inappropriate to refer to them and the problems they face as being broadly metropolitan. Urban geographers and planners now tend to use the term 'metropolitan' to refer to a large identifiable area of continuous urbanization consisting of several administrative jurisdictions. Demographers today often classify cities with populations of more than one million people as metropolitan, and in common usage the term is widely employed to symbolize social, economic, and political status. All of these characteristics apply to the cities studied here.

A Shadow State? Voluntarism in Metropolitan Los Angeles:

Abstract: The character of voluntary action and its relationship to the political economy are changing in response to recent policy shifts favoring service reductions, privatization, and a transferral of responsibility for services, under ‘new federalism’ policies. In an examination of new data for voluntary organizations in the Los Angeles metropolitan region, an extensively differentiated sector of significant size is found that is often highly reliant on public funding, but which is becoming increasingly entrepreneurial and has begun to shift more of the service cost burden onto clients as a consequence of reductions in funding support. These characteristics have important implications for the region and possibly for other urban areas in the USA, one of which is that this new reliance on voluntary services could lead to the existence of a shadow state: a new institutional form that fulfills many of the functions of government but also makes many public policy decisions in the absence of governmental preemption.

The metro rating game: what can be learned from the recent migrants?

Abstract: The authors examine nine indicators of quality of life in the 277 U.S. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) in terms of their impact on the decision to migrate. The factors considered were utilized in the 1985 publication "Places Rated Almanac" and include climate, housing, health care, crime, transportation, education, recreation, arts, and economics. "The purpose of this paper is both to analyze several alternative methods by which the nine 'Places Rated' indicators have been combined in previous studies, and to estimate a new system of weights for combining such indicators from a multivariate model of metropolitan out-migration." In this article, the authors examine out-migration of metropolitan households during the years 1975-1980. "Coefficient estimates from a multivariate model of out-migration form the basis for a ranking of metropolitan areas in the third section. Also included are comparisons among this and other studies of both the implicit weights employed against the 'Places Rated' scores...to derive both overall measures of urban life quality, and how such quality varies by city size."

State and local tax deductibility and metropolitan migration

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which metropolitan dwellers would likely "vote with their feet" in response to the elimination of state and local tax deductibility. Incrementa...

The Elite Arts, More or Less de rigueur: A Comparative Analysis of Metropolitan Culture

Abstract: The prevalence of elite art institutions-theater and dance companies, museums, orchestras, and opera-in the largest 125 metropolitan places in the United States is the focus of this investigation. Considered in the explanation are urban resources, region, and demographic characteristics. Urban size accounts for more of the total variation in museums and opera companies than that in the numbers of other institutions, yet nonsize factors play a major role in explaining the prevalence of museums but not that of opera companies-a finding that relates to their differences in artistic conventionality and public accessibility. Results for population diversity indicate that a critical mass mobilizes markets in very large places but diversity fractionates markets in less large places. Elite arts depend on a large homogeneous upper-middle class, except for opera, which alone is related to economic inequalities. Our assumptions about the social and economic conditions that promote

Trends in farming near cities

Abstract: Farming trends in U.S. metropolitan areas over the past four decades were analyzed using county-level census data. The results do not support the prevalent belief that, because of anticipated suburban development, farmers in metropolitan areas idle land prematurely and fail to maintain and improve their farms9 productivity. Number of farms, land in farms, and harvested cropland declined only slightly faster and sales of farm products rose only slightly slower than in adjacent nonmetropolitan areas. More recently, the relative decline in metro areas has stopped. Analysis of relative rates of change beteen 1969 and 1982 suggests that metro-nonmetro differences in the characteristics of farms and their operators may be more important than differences related to population and development pressures on the land.

Supply-Side Considerations in the Location of Industry in Suburban Communities: Empirical Evidence from the Philadelphia SMSA

Abstract: An examination of the recent data on the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment in the largest metropolitan areas of the U.S. leaves little doubt that the majority of the new industrial location activity that is occurring in metropolitan America is in its suburbs.' The increasing importance of the suburbs as a location for manufacturing activity raises important efficiency and equity issues for government decision makers at all levels. This paper deals with one of these efficiency issues-the impact of local government activities on the spatial allocation of industrial investment in the suburbs of a

The Informal Sector in an Intermediate City: A Case in Egypt

Abstract: Overurbanization in developing countries is the result of rapid population growth and an urban bias in the predominant development strategies. Since the number of jobs created in industry and modern services has been insufficient to absorb the growing urban labor force, the informal sector (i.e., small-scale activities in handicrafts and manufacturing, construction, transport, trade, or other services) became the "last economic resort" for the underemployed. Research on the informal sector has been concentrated on metropolitan cities, and numerous reports by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) have urged governments not to hamper but rather to assist this neglected sector.1 With renewed emphasis placed on rural development, intermediate and small cities have been receiving more attention as potential centers for agricultural services and a labor-intensive rural industrialization. By creating new jobs in nonfarm activities, these cities could curb out-migration and thereby relieve the pressure on the big cities. Employment opportunities in rural areas are of great relevance within the Egyptian context, since Cairo and other agglomerations in the Nile Delta are all showing symptoms of overpopulation. But deconcentration policies have traditionally focused on costly satellite cities in the desert, with only passing interest shown in the employment and growth potential of existing small and intermediate cities. Assistance for the productive segments of the informal sector could be the focus of job creation in smaller cities, because it is reasonable to assume that various weaknesses exist in small workshops, such as inadequate skills, outdated equipment, and insufficient managerial resources. But enterprises with severe problems will rarely expand their operations; low productivity and returns raise economic survival and the avoidance of unemployment to the top priority. Secu-

A Political-Ecological Analysis of Income Inequality in the Metropolitan Area:

Abstract: This empirical analysis updates and broadens the work done by Logan and Schneider on 1960 and 1970 data (Urban Affairs Quarterly, March 1982). In an analysis of 1980 non-central-city/central-city i...

Interactive medical telecomputing. An alternative approach to community health education.

Abstract: In the fall of 1984, the Department of Family Medicine at Case Western Reserve University had five clinical units located at hospitals scattered throughout the Cleveland metropolitan area. A means ...

Zonas metropolitanas en México, 1980

Abstract: In this investigation, metropolitan development in Mexico from 1960 to 1980 is discussed. Most importantly, by means of the application of techniques used in multivariate analysis, twenty-six metropolitan zones were delimited in the country for the year 1980, which represents a significant increase when compared to the twelve that existed at the beginning of the period. Despite evident downward tendencies in demographic concentration in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City and the upward tendencies of that concentration in the country's central region, the inertia generated by the dynamics of previous growth has impeded the country's urbanization process from reaching the point of inflection marking the so-called "inversion of polarization". Insofar as the development of these metropolises on an internal level is concerned, it is observed that they are at different points in their evolution. The Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is the most advanced one and is currently at a stage in which its total growth rate is declining and the downtown area is undergoing depopulation, along with rapid growth in surrounding municipalities. The phenomena of tertiarization and the relocation of industrial employment toward outlying metropolitan zones are the outstanding changes that have affected the sectorial and territorial structure of metropolitan employment in the twenty years under review.

Metropolitan Elderly Out-Migration in Canada, 1971-1976 Characterization and Explanation

Abstract: This article analyzes the 1971-1976 out-migration pattern of the Canadian male elderly from the 23 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) Migration is conceptualized within a three-level choice framework, and statistical inference is based on a logit model The findings include that (1) retirement-oriented migration in Canada takes place long before the official retirement age; (2) compared with the young migrants, the elderly migrants are less likely to be metropolitanward and tend to have a more concentrated destination choice pattern; (3) with respect to metropolitanward elderly migrants from the CMAs, the probability of choosing a particular destination is negatively related to the logarithm of distance, cultural dissimilarity, coldness, and gross rent, and positively related to population size, brightness, and housing growth; and (4) compared with the young migrants, the elderly migrants are more sensitive to the environmental variables