A REVIEW ON THE STUDY OF URBAN RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURES: ON THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FACTORIAL ECOLOGY AND URBAN GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

The study of urban factorial ecology has become popular among Japanese geographers because this is one of the most useful methods for analyzing basic urban residential dimensions and structures. This field of study in Japan, however, takes little consideration of the results of traditional studies of urban residential structures. The first point at issue in this paper is the spatial and social significance of the two main ecological factors, i.e., socio-economic status and family status. Since the spatial patterns of socio-economic status factor are arranged by sectors, these are coincident with the sactorial patterns of high status residential areas by Hoyt. Thus, it is necessary to explore the relationships between the spatial patterns of socio-economic status by the factorial method and those of high status residential areas by the traditional method. Family status factor displays concentric patterns and, therefore, the areal patterns of age structures and life cycles need to be investigated in detail. The second point at issue is the study of ecological change through time. This kind of study can be approached by two analytical methods: cross-sectional analysis and longitudinal one. The former is a comparison of ecological structures between two time periods, and the latter is a matter of ecological change through time. Since the longitudinal analysis compares the differences in the rate of change of variables between two time periods, the amount of variation of variables which can be explained by factors is smaller than that of the cross-sectional analysis method. Thus, it is necessary to select a proper analytical method by considering the relative merits of various measures of change. In view of the length of time for analysis, the study of ecological change is divided into short-time studies and long-time ones. The former is to explore the uniformly continuous change in recent time, the latter is to explore the historical change over a long period of time, which is especially related to the problem of the historical residential development. In order to analyze the residential structures in Japanese cities synthetically, the results of factorial ecological studies are to be discussed in comparison not only with the results of the earlier studies in the U. S. A. which possesses the typical ethnic differences, but also with the results in the other countries which possess little ethnic differences in terms of residential structures. Moreover, it is necessary to explore the complex interrelationships between ecological factors and residential structures by traditional method, and also to formulate the model of historical residential developments in Japan.