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Since World War II urban areas in the United States have experienced a gigantic expansion. A number of problems have accompanied the growth—among them are a transportation lag, urban blight, and urban sprawl. Attempts to deal with these problems continually demonstrate our need for a better understanding of the complexities of metropolitan structures. For instance, when an individual selects property in a particular residential area, what influences his choice? Certainly land prices are one of the influencing forces but what determines land values? This paper, which given results of a study conducted at The RAND Corporation under the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation describes and tests a model of residential land values in Los Angeles County. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a model in which two urban emergency service units (such as fire engines or ambulances) cooperate in responding to alarms or calls from the public in a specified region of a city. Given the home locations of the units and the spatial distribution of alarm rates, it is possible to specify which unit should respond to each alarm by defining a response area for each unit. The average response time to alarms and the workload of each unit are calculated as functions of the boundary that separates their response areas. The boundaries that minimize average response time and the ones that equalize workload are determined. Some boundaries can be dominated, in the sense that another boundary improves both workload balance and response time. The set of undominated boundaries is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of outmigration as a means for easing the difficulties. The importance and the role of industrial relocation in aiding depressed areas is fully realized, but limitations of space demand this partial treatment of solutions to the depressed area problem. It will be therefore assumed throughout the paper that no government authority is trying to encourage the relocation of industrial activities in the depressed area. Two distinctions can be made as to the nature of depressed areas for the purposes of analysis. The first pertains to the environment. Depressed conditions may be present in an urban-industrial setting but they also frequently exist within rural milieu. A second distinction concerns the scale of the depressed area. The depressed community consists of an individual city, a county or a state economic area, the latter division being creation of the United States Bureau of Census. Such communities may be black spots in an otherwise fairly prosperous area or they may form part of a larger depressed area that could be labeled a depressed region. This larger entity might comprise, for example, an economic sub-region (another division being used for a unit breakdown of the nation by the United States Bureau of Census), a large metropolitan area, or a river basin. This distinction is arbitrary and in several other respects unsatisfactory. It is essential nonetheless because the outmigration will affect the two types of area in differing ways: what may be relevant and important in the case of a community may have less applicability and significance at the regional level.

This paper attempts to answer several questions about urbanization in New Zealand: (1) How have the paradoxical phenomena of a high level of urbanization and an agriculturally oriented economy coexisted in New Zealand? (2) How do the levels of urbanization in New Zealand and in the other "new countries" of British origin (Australia, Canada, and the United States) compare? (3) Why has New Zealand never had a single dominant metropolis as is commonly found in other countries of its size? (4) How have the sources or urbanization--reclassification, differential natural increase, and migration--influenced the process of urbanization in New Zealand? (5) How has New Zealand's small population affected its urban proportion? (6) What factors underlie the phenomenal rate of urbanization of New Zealand's Maori population during the past generation? The analysis covers the period from 1861 to 1971. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between intelligence and occupation and, secondly, relates occupation to various aspects of migration. The relationship between occupation and test intelligence has been the subject of considerable investigation. There tends to be a hierarchy of occupational structure which is closely related to test intelligence, whether the classification is based on the subject's parental occupation or on his own occupation. The material for the investigation consists of the Ohio State University Intelligence Test scores for about 5,000 boys and girls who were high school seniors in 116 Missouri communities in 1939-41. There seems to be a distinct tendency for the brighter boys and girls in rural areas and small towns of Missouri, to find their occupational levels in the higher prestige occupations, especially the professional groups, while those who perform more poorly on tests are more likely to become manual worker and farmers with somewhat lower rankings on the prestige scale.

Although the objective of the large study of which one facet is here reported was to test certain hypotheses with respect to causal factors in integration, this paper is not concerned with causes. But something must be said on this subject in order to make clear why the data concern only four cities. The studies through 1946 indicated that there was great variation among large American cities in integration as measured positively by welfare effort and negatively by crime, and that more than three-fifths of the variance was attributable to two causal factors—degree of heterogeneity of the population in terms of nationality and race, and in- and out-migration of the population. It was also found that the residual, unexplained variance in integration was much greater for some cities than for others. It was presumed that other causal factors were working strongly in the cities whose integration scores could be predicted least accurately from their population composition and mobility scores.

The article, through the example of Nashville, Tennessee, convinces that progress in urban geography will be made only by a comparative study of a large number of urban centers. The study in this article is concerned with the commercial district or business area but more particularly with the retail section of the commercial area. The quality of buildings and business in general is the highest from Fifth to Seventh. Most of the buildings are new and are the largest in the retail business sections of the city.

This article presents the author's comments on the article "The Rural-Urban Variable: An Urbanite's Perspective," by Leo F. Schnore. Schnore asserts that the central thesis of this article is that rural-urban divergences in the U.S. are still substantial and worth studying. The author says that this proposition is not new. It is avowed openly by many rural sociologists and, at least tacitly, by most through the kinds of research they pursue and the action programs they often supplement. Schnore's thesis is somewhat unorthodox, for it is the author's impression that Richard Dewey's article "The Rural-Urban Continuum: Real But Relatively Unimportant," more nearly states the typical urbanite's evaluation. Although Schnore's claim may be more congenial to rural sociology as a profession. appraising its validity requires heavy lending of ideas from the position which underlies Dewey's evaluation. Without attempting to classify Schnore's indices in Dewey's schema, the author suspects that sociologists like Dewey might be willing to subsume all of them as only specific aspects of one or another of the five structural qualities Dewey is willing to admit as invariant concomitants of size and density.

A variety of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics is known to vary consistently along the rural-urban continuum in highly developed nations such as the United States. Relatively little is known, however, about such variations in underdeveloped countries. In an effort to throw further light on this subject, the present paper examines the relationship of selected socio-demographic variables defining "urbanism" to a rural-urban continuum constructed for Taiwan. The results of the analysis suggest (1) that the theoretical applicability of the continuum concept is just as valid for under-developed areas as it is for countries such as the United States, and (2) that from a methodological point of view, a more realistic approach to the construction of a rural-urban continuum is one that utilizes both population size and administrative type in the classification of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a regional interpretation of manufacturing as an urban function in the United States. But this interpretation is supplemented by the notion of a national systems of cities, which believes that urban and metropolitan functions are inter-regionally organized. This paper examines the occurrence of manufacturing activity in the larger urban and metropolitan centers of the West North Central geographic division, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Using manufacturing activity as the dependent variable (Y) and an indication of accessibility as the independent variable (X), the regression of Y on X was computed for each groups as well as the correlation coefficient. Deviations of the actual percentage engaged in manufacture from the predicted percentage were computed for each city. On the basis of study three groups were identified: diversified manufacturing centers with metropolitan functions, diversified manufacturing centers with few metropolitan functions and specialized manufacturing centers. The second major grouping includes the regional metropolises and the regional capitals.

The article reports on the development of a model that uses existing data and theory to determine commercial structure in depressed urban neighborhoods. The model, which is based on the problems of neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio, and other cities with populations of at least 50,000, offers assistance for marketing-related dilemmas. The author proposes that the development of large retail chains and other service stores in depressed urban neighborhoods is dependent on short and long-term consumer demand. Government enterprise programs that are used to stimulate small businesses in the U.S. are also discussed.

All urban communities are searching for revenues but the fiscal dilemma of the large and especially the older cities is particularly critical. The financial trials of the suburbs are well chronicled in local community papers. However, the white suburban commuter with his new split-level, his swimming pool, country club membership and multiple car ownership is either unwilling to support the public sector, particularly the central city or is unaware of the problem and its long-range effect on his own security. The large and older cities frozen geographically long ago, burdened with the ills of its residents African Americans, poor whites immigrants, as well as by the coming and going of the white suburban motorcar commuter--face a bleak fiscal future. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest some untapped revenue sources available even at this late date. To lay the groundwork for these proposals, several significant factors are presented and examined. Overall, this is a good statement of the specific problems of Providence, Rhode Island, as well as that of many other cities. The income tax solution proposed, however, brings us head-on with some very astute people--those who commute to work in the city. They are a group of affluent white persons who have taken advantage of both their affluence as well as the sizeable housing, tax and highway subsidies to take up residence in the gas-light suburban communities, still using the city as their place of employment, while carefully avoiding financial responsibilities to the city.

This article presents a study which seeks to break down the income differential between whites and non-whites in the U.S. into two categories: a differential resulting from differences in productivity factors not directly related to employment discrimination, and a residual unaccounted for by differences in productivity factors and which may result largely from employment discrimination. The paper provides estimates of the importance of various factors in explaining the money income differential between white and nonwhite urban males, 25 years of age and over, in 1960. Also presented in this paper are estimates using both mean and median earnings data for males in nonfarm occupations and consideration of regional differences in earnings differentials between white and nonwhite males. After adjustment for differences in education, scholastic achievement, age, region, and city size, the nonwhite median income is estimated between 81 and 87 percent of the white for urban males and 77 and 86 percent for males in nonfarm occupations .The results indicate that a large portion of the income differential between white and nonwhite urban males is the result of differences in quantity of education and scholastic achievement. Whites and nonwhites differ not only in quantity of education, but also in scholastic achievement level. Nonwhites are over represented in southern states. This reduces their income relative to whites because: incomes of both whites and nonwhites are lower in southern states than northern states and; the income differential is greater in southern states. Moreover, nonwhites are overrepresented relative to whites in the larger cities. Nonwhite urban males were overrepresented in the prime earning age categories in the U.S. in 1959. The South is generally believed to be more inclined toward employment discrimination than the North.

An analysis of destination choices among metropolitan bound migrants in an already highly urban society is a means toward gauging trends in the urbanization process. The results of this paper indicated that destination choices were strongly influenced by SMSA size, with larger SMSAs and particularly their suburban rings attractive to migrants. This pattern suggested the further growth of the larger SMSAs, to the detriment of those smaller in size. In addition, the varied status of migrants entering the ring pointed toward its increased heterogeneity. Yet, among small SMSAs, the central city received more and higher-status migrants than the ring. Here, destination choice was also linked to similarity to the migrant's past residence. Regional differences emerged, and a closer examination of small and very large SMSAs suggested that destination choices were influenced by previous patterns of urban growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper, is primarily concerned with the changes in the degree of residential segregation between 1940 and 1950. For this purpose the analysis was restricted to the 185 cities appearing in both series. The average segregation score for these cities increased by +.033 from .734 to .767. However, since such an average gives equal weight to cities of all sizes, it was deemed preferable to compute a combined index based upon the sums of all of the original figures. Significantly, the degree of change was exactly the same, +.033, for this combined index as it was for the average of indexes, increasing from .830 to .863. The precise agreement, both in direction and amount of change, between these two sets of figures leads to the certain conclusion that residential segregation in these American cities did in fact increase during the decade, 1940-1950. Apparently the Supreme Court decision declaring restrictive covenants unconstitutional did not produce any significant or immediate change in the tendency to segregate nonwhites. In fact, segregation increased in the face of this decision and other influences toward desegregation.

Social scientists are often confronted with the problem of dividing large areas into smaller sub-units for purposes of research. The process through which any desired sub-area system is derived varies with the theoretical position and substantive interests of the investigator involved. In recent decades, urban sociologists and ecologists have been particularly concerned with the division of cities (large areal units) into census tracts (small areal units). The distinction and utility of the census tract lies in the fact that it is the smallest urban area unit for which the Bureau of the Census regularly reports complete information. The method discussed in this paper has been developed in the course of formulating a census tract plan for the city of Lansing, Michigan. The general problem to be solved is that of dividing a total area into a set of subareas which meet a criterion of demographic homogeneity. Ideally, two conditions should obtain in the resulting scheme: (a) the resulting sub-areas must be continuous and contiguous, and exhaust the total space within the corporate limits of the city, and (b) the populations contained within the sub-areas should achieve a maximum degree of homogeneity within each sub-area and a maximum degree of heterogeneity among the subareas.

One modern school of family sociologists considers the present urban American family an alarming instance of disintegration in the familial process. Another school considers the modern urban family to be making a reasonably satisfactory adjustment to population density. It is the purpose of this paper to point out certain trends that may be leading toward the emergence of a variant type of urban family which may be able to satisfy the requisites of sociologist C.C. Zimmerman and yet function adequately in the urban community. Various trends in American society do not prove conclusively the existence and operation of a fringe family. These trends fall under the categories of demographic, ecological, labor force, and social stratification. If one follows the clues suggested by current urban population and economic trends in the light of what is already known about the modern suburban family, a number of inferences on the structure of the fringe family becomes possible.

Recent developments in the study of vital statistics have made the factors involved in rates of death a little more apparent. Certain hypotheses have been given additional support by the new evidence available, while other generally accepted as are coming under the shadow of doubt. The purpose of this paper is to present some findings on this "matter of life and death" for Virginia. A death rate is a ratio of a number of deaths, occurring in a specified period, to a given population subject to the risk of such death. In practice, there are difficulties in obtaining accurate data and in defining their use. The distortion of the population figures by the hope of securing old age assistance is best shown in the urban nonwhite groups of age 65 to 69. Both males and females have lower death rates at 65 to 69 than at 60 to 64. The rural nonwhites were also sufficiently influenced so that their age specific death rate charts are inflected at these ages. The qualified conclusion is that when females appear to have higher death rates than males it is due to childbearing under conditions which produce high maternal mortality. Wider use of the sulfonamides may eliminate enough of the risk of maternity to reduce all female rates below those of males in the near future.

This paper represents one of the reports on a series of studies dealing with mobility of high school graduates from villages and towns in different sections of the United States. The choice of high school graduates as subjects for a study of mobility leaves much to be desired in presenting the total picture of mobility from any community. Even if one restricts oneself to the movement of the younger generation, the choice of sixth graders would be preferable to that of high school graduates since practically all members of the community have experience at that lower school level whereas a much smaller percentage finish high school. The communities chosen for study are rural non-manufacturing towns with a substantial excess of youth beyond the number who can be absorbed in the limited work opportunities of the locality. The present study indicates that not only do the great majority of high school graduates not rise above the status level of parents but that many sons fall below that level.

The paper is one chapter from a larger study called "Success and Failure of Adult Probationers in Wisconsin." The problem is to compare the behavior of rural-farm probationers, rural-nonfarm probationers, and urban-nonfarm probationers with respect to certain traits in their history. These traits were age of conviction, factors in the family background, factors associated with the circumstances and conditions of the crime and of the trial, crime for which convicted, length of sentence, and period on probation. Rural- farm and urban-nonfarm differ most strikingly in their behavior on probation. The critical ratio of the standard error of difference to the actual difference between their mean violation rates was 6.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a model designed to explain rent differentials between white and nonwhite sections of cities in the U.S. based upon notions of market separation and then tests these notions using a cross-section regression analysis on 1960 census data for U. S. metropolitan areas. According to the authors, the character of U.S. metropolitan areas is suggestive of a theory of market separation to explain economic differentials that obtain in the various geographic and racial sections of cities. Social and cultural characteristics that limit the free mobility of people, goods, and information create conditions under which economic variables may take on different values in two markets that are close in a geographic sense and nominally integrated. The authors note that based from their analysis, policies designed to reduce the rate of white migration out of center cities to suburbs may have adverse effects. White migration is alleged to increase problems with the declining tax base in center cities, the outward flow of industry, and their cumulative effect on urban blight, slum conditions, and violence. Their findings also imply that the observed relocation pattern of ghetto residents displaced under urban renewal programs may have been less than optimal.

The article throws light on professor Richard Pillsbury's recent article on the urban street pattern of Pennsylvania. It is a welcome indication that geographers are turning to the urban plan as a valuable and as yet little exploited, source in regional analysis. This highly visible element of urban form is particularly suited to the systematic study of urban phenomena in an international context. Useful though the paper is, it prompts some comments upon its methodology and conclusions and the broader context of urban-historical research.

Statistical information on the size and characteristics of a population can be cartographically illustrated by the so-called value-by-area cartogram. Although geographical details and relationships must mostly be ignored, it is practical to keep to certain fixed points to help orientation. The paper presents a population cartogram of the USA with particular regard to the SMSA-population. The tendency has been to retain both the rough placings of cities and states and some features typical of the USA map. Examples are given of the practical utilization of the cartogram.

What changes in public health nursing service in the home have taken place as result of crisis situations in various American cities? This paper based on mail questionnaire responses presents some tentative answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on developments in the metropolitan law enforcement. For the purposes of this paper, a survey has been made of various metropolitan studies. From these studies have been abstracted the specific recommendations relating to police organization and the police function. A discussion of such recommendations as well as the development of certain generalizations may prove useful in assessing the present state of metropolitan and regional law enforcement. There are 174 Standard Metropolitan Areas in the U.S. Socially and economically, the central cities and peripheral communities of these metropolitan areas are integrated and interdependent. However these areas are administered by congeries of innumerable autonomous units of local government. In terms of volume alone, metropolitan areas are the situs of the bulk of the criminal activity of the nation. Each police official in a metropolitan area is generally responsible for the fulfillment of the total police function, but he commonly possesses tools which are inadequate for the job. Generally, these officials have a jurisdiction which represents but a fraction of the total metropolitan area. There are many problems that were cited in the study with regard to the metropolitan law enforcement and these are: inadequate police units, inadequate staff services, service deficiencies, policy differences and confused jurisdictional lines.

In recent years many large cities have been purchasing floodplains for recreational use. The advantages of utilizing floodplains for recreation use are more obvious than are the disadvantages which have received less public attention. This paper focuses on the efficacy of floodplains as a source of recreation land for metropolitan areas. Several advantages for buying floodplains for recreational use are usually espoused by planners. Land acquisition expenditures for recreational development are much less for the city which opts to buy floodplain land rather than more costly land. When appropriately and adequately zoned, floodplain lands have fewer improvements and the improvements on the floodplains are less valuable than comparable structures located outside the floodplain. Finally, the vulnerability of floodplain lands to flooding limits the uses that can he made of this land. Floodplain land provides art ideal setting for particular kinds of recreational activities. Water-based activities such as boating. fishing and swimming are typical of recreational uses made of floodplains.

In the last several decades there has been a continuous and often rapid decline of the central business district (CBD) in most cities in the U.S. This decline is related to the general weakening if the central city caused by the increasing suburbanization of urban populations. The CBD is the nucleus around which a city is organized. It is a multidimensional entity comprising of many functions, the most important of which are, retail trade, professional services, entertaining facilities, and cultural and aesthetic attractions. In the article a number of hypotheses are formulated concerning certain factors responsible for the decline of the retail trade sector and are tested statistically with data for a number of American standard metropolitan statistical areas' (SMSA). The main hypothesis developed in this paper is that the per cent of SMSA retail sales realized in CBD is a function of the industry mix of the area, the population size and growth rate, the per cent of the population of the area living in the central city, the ratio of median family income in central city over median family income in SMSA and the interaction between size of SMSA arid growth.

One purpose of this paper was to examine the built-in meanings and possible biases of the present Bureau of Outdoor Recreation approach before a multi-billion dollar urban recreation plan is developed in the U.S., the first stage of which has been sent to the Congress. The two general objectives of recreation planners were examined, given the assumptions usually made and compared with economic efficiency and equity considerations. The second purpose was to examine the empirical evidence available to determine if the assumptions of the present planning methodology are accurate. The conclusion is that if a multi-billion dollar program for urban recreation is forthcoming, the time to determine recreation programs which are based upon flexible recreation plans and standards is now and the need for further research to analyze the causes of the differences in participation patterns in light of the present polarization of the society is urgent. Continuing to allocate expenditures on recreation facilities based on family income differentials will only further distort these differences and defeat the stated intent of a multi-billion dollar urban recreation plan.

This article focuses on the analysis of congestion, which seems to be the most important and interesting of the alleged causes of excessive city size in the U.S. An extensive sampling of the urban economics literature suggests that most of the factors that can plausibly be claimed to distort city sizes can be classified under three headings: the provision and financing of local public services, pollution, and congestion. Moreover, the increment in pollution damage resulting from an additional resident must exceed the average damage. It is concluded that if too many people will come to the urban area, it will be more polluted than would be efficient.