THE SOCIAL AREAS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY REGION.

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.