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The purpose of this paper is to examine further the analytic utility of an urban typology recently constructed and reported in "The Social Areas of Los Angeles." After examining relevant sociological theory, empirical studies, and, most importantly, the long term social trends characteristic of the development of modern urban society, certain social factors were specified which were considered basic to the stratification and differentiation of the large city. These factors are social rank, urbanization, and segregation. They select indexes of each of these social factors, and then define types of social areas as groups of census tracts having similar configuration of scores on the three indexes. Some work has already been done testing the validity of this typology. For example, the logic by which these basic social factors were derived has been empirically verified, and the indexes used in the typology have been shown to be unidimensional measuring instruments. Some aspects of the analytic utility of the typology have been indicated.

If social area and ecological theory in the United States is to escape the limitations imposed by such cultural traditions as private building, private investment, and rental of housing units, it is necessary to identify those influences, which are not currently measured in United States urban communities. Public housing is one such influence. A review of current theories and their applications reveals an ethnocentric bias. The bias is understandable since American studies are limited to data provided by the United States Bureau of the Census. This paper focuses upon the influence of the invasion and succession of public housing at the time of the 1961 Census in three English cities: Norwich, Nottingham, and Southend-on-Sea. Public housing may be expected to be a factor in the increasing urbanization of the world population. Such housing will appear in different cultural contexts and will continue to have historical traditions, which are contingent upon matters of public philosophy and policy. Social area theory, which is based upon research in any one nation state, is necessarily "culture bound" unless conscious efforts are directed toward cross-national comparisons.

The responses of 370 college women were obtained in a check list of possible worries containing 280 items. Analysis was made of the 81 items which were checked by 10 per cent or more of the group. It was found that the largest frequencies of indicated worries were in the personality, academic, and social areas. The smallest frequencies of indicated worries were in the home, physical, and financial areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A total of 440 adult couples, some with and some without accompanying children, were observed in eight different kinds of public places. Couples with children were observed to touch, talk, and smile less at one another. The smiling effect may be an artifact of situations in which adults travel without children or of the kinds of adults who travel in situations where children are absent. But it seems clear that children are disruptive of adult touching and talking. This disruption may mean that couples with children experience reduced reward levels and less adequate communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding good methods of classifying qualitative data for use in research is one of the most serious problems facing psychologists today, especially in the clinical and social areas. This article analyzes the problem of judging qualitative data and proposes a method for coping with it. The method set forth here is designed to be used in conjunction with the statistic developed elsewhere. Consider a content analyst confronted with a large amount of qualitative material from which he wants to generate hypothesis-testing experiments. Usually, in content analyses several judges are given a list of about three to eight categories and the criteria for exclusion or inclusion for these categories. The judges are then provided with some qualitative data, such as protocols, on-going group behavior, motion pictures, tape recordings, stories in response to projective pictures, etc. The judges categorize all the material, and then some measure of their agreement or disagreement is made. The author has also considered the problem of how the instructions are to be administered so that maximum reliability for the categories is obtained.

The overwhelming problem created by the phenomenal growth of contemporary urban areas have generated increasing efforts to gain a scientific understanding of the organization and distribution of human activities in space, their interlinkages, and the flows of people, goods, and information between them. Researchers from various disciplines have searched for means with which to comprehend the complexities marking the inner workings of the metropolis with the hope that an improved understanding of this city-system will lead to a firmer foundation upon which to base policy decisions designed to effect willful change within it. The theory of urban spatial structure is concerned with the disposition of human socio-economic activities in urban areas. Its goals are to discover, explain, and ultimately predict the regularities that exist in man's adaptation to city space. A system-oriented approach toward the analysis of urban form and structure is fundamentally one, which interprets the spatial pattern of a city in terms of the dynamics of natural, social and economic forces acting within an urban environment.

Social area analysis was employed in an ecological study of crime and delinquency in a metropolitan area. It was found that crime rates were negatively correlated with economic status and positively correlated with racial status. Delinquency rates were negatively correlated with economic status and family status and positively correlated with racial status. The proportion of delinquency to crime was positively correlated with economic status and negatively correlated with family status and racial status. Further analysis according to the grouping of census tracts into social areas and racial areas revealed qualifications of the correlations. The ecology of crime and delinquency has significance only when social structures are specified by measures which are related to a theoretical framework, as is the case with social area analysis. Finally, the rates and patterns of crime and delinquency appear to be related to characteristics and trends in con temporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and substantive issues concerning the use of social area analysis are addressed by means of comparisons of U. S. and Roman findings. Analysis reveals: (1) the social area approach may be applied to non-U. S. census data; (2) all dimensions of the typology are necessary in Rome as in the U. S.; (3) the test variables describing life styles, living conditions, and work patterns are meaningfully related to the dimensions of the typology; (4) changes in the forms of social differentiation may be related to the relative scale of social organization of a society; (5) social rank and urbanization are more highly related in Rome than in U. S.; (6) distribution of areas in terms of social rank and urbanization is both zonal and sect oral with low social rank areas in the periphery of Rome. Findings present strong evidence for the broad theoretical and analytic utility of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with a study assessing management of tensions between conflicting usages of a public place. According to disciplinary definitions, public places are accessible to the totality of the population. This means that members of deviant groups may enter and share the facilities with non-deviant groups. Many deviant groups colonize public territories or sections of public territories. But there, however, arises a problem regarding the rights of the public to access and to put the area to that use which they desire. The deviant group may, supposedly, pose a potential threat, it is only when their activities break certain unwritten laws surrounding behaviour and the respecting of others' rights in public places, that legal sanctions are utilised to reestablish the public nature of the place. The author presents exploratory suggestions regarding why a particular deviant group choose to colonize a particular area within a particular public place, and why the public and staff allow them to do so.

The article provides an insight to the neighborhood unit principle and the organic theory. An organic city is such that its form and structure is one with its purpose and the purpose of the organic city is to create a life enhancing environment for man living in communities. The organic city would provide the stimulation of diversity, and a maximum of contrast, contained within an over-riding unity. The concept most widely accepted by protagonists of organic town planning is that of the "neighborhood unit." The neighborhood unit is a technical term for a planning device. The neighborhood unit is a geographical and social area predicated by the territorial group, which constitutes the neighborhood. The garden suburbs attempted the creation of residential areas more pleasant and therefore more distinctive than that provided by land speculators and developers. The centralization of social facilities tended to make the garden suburb more inward looking. The classic definition of the neighborhood unit is of a residential area's size, boundaries, open spaces, institution sites, local shops and internal street system.

Research on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area casts doubt on the assertion that factorial ecology can be used to derive the "community of outlook." Social areas delimited by factorial ecology were not effective in identifying common interests and values as revealed by the composite of printed information sources in sampled households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]