Urban structure and coastal zone management: Some tests of generality and scale along the Texas Gulf Coast

Abstract

Abstract The method of allocating projected residences within urban areas utilized by the Texas Coastal Resources Management Program rests on the concepts of urban factorial ecology. Urban factorial ecology postulates that socioeconomic and housing characteristics group together in basic dimensions that have usually been labeled socioeconomic status and family life cycle. The existence of such dimensions in coastal cities of Texas is a prerequisite to the allocation of residences in them. The objective of this article is first to test the applicability of the method in selected coastal urban areas by testing for such dimensions and, second, to test the sensitivity of the allocation method to city size by examining the similarity (or dissimilarity) of factorial ecologies of different‐size areas. The results indicate that such dimensions do exist in the coastal areas examined. Furthermore, the utility of the method appears to be reasonably independent of the size of the area studied, except when the area is...