Space-Time Components of Urban Population Change

Abstract

Construction of subregional urban models requires knowledge of the relationships between activity levels and the spatial structure of urban systems. Covariance procedures are used to identify associations between population change and urban hierarchies, fields, and core-periphery structures in southern Ontario. Over three time periods, from 1941 to 1971, the hierarchical variable shows little explanatory power, although this does not preclude the possibility of hierarchical impulses operating within the decade spans of these data. Autocorrelation in the rates of change damps out over distance, but there are significant regional variations. In the two decades of slower but steady growth, covariances are high and distance damping is spatially homogeneous. However, in the fast growth era of the nineteen-fifties core-periphery contrasts are heightened, local heterogeneity increases outside the core region, and patterns of population change reflect metropolitan influence fields.