RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURE OF MIDWESTERN CITIES

ABSTRACT In studies of the spatial patterning of American urban land uses, the sector, ring, and neighborhood concepts persist because each describes the distinctive outcome of a separate spatial process. Sectors depend on the narrow urban images which housing consumers use when selecting a new residence. Housing producers create a concentric ring increment to the urban housing stock in each boom of the building cycle. Extended boom periods produce wide rings, short booms yield narrow rings, and border zones between rings reflect recession lulls in new construction. The intraurban transport technology that prevails during each building boom controls the areal density of new dwelling units and the shapes of new residential areas. A model urban residential pattern, generated to reflect construction cycles and transport eras, can be verified with census housing data and is consistent with sector, ring, and neighborhood concepts, and with distance-density decline models of urban spatial organization.