Correlates of Urban Residential Structure

Abstract

Working within the structural tradition of human ecology, we investigate the structural correlates of residential patterns. Specifically, we quantify the degree to which nine characteristics of census tracts within 38 U.S. cities fit the zonal, sectoral, and multiple nuclei models of urban residential structure. We then regress each of these quantified patterns on a set of 14 structural variables that are descriptive of cities. We find that a zonal pattern is positively related to the relative economic power of the city and negatively related to a measure of quality of life in the city. Sectoral patterns are related to the number of radial roads, the size of the minority population, and the land area of the city. It has a negative relationship to the number of circular highways. Nucleation is shown to be positively related to the size of the foreign born population, the number of communities, and the land area. Nucleation is negatively related to the population of the cities. ί he present research is an analysis of the correlates of urban residential structure. This research is rooted in the structural tradition of human ecology which concerns itself with both social and spatial relationships. Park (1926:17) notes the relationship between spatial structure and social characteristics:It is because social relations are so frequently and so inevitably correlated with spatial relations; because physical distances, so frequently are, or seem to be, the indexes of social distances, that statistics have any significance whatever for sociology.