| This dissertation focuses upon both the structure and change of the central city Cleveland's constituent neighborhoods during a fifty-year study period: 1930-1980. Attention is therefore given not only to the static composition of urban sub-areas but to their dynamic transition as well. Three distinct dependent dimensions are examined: (1) status, (2) race, and (3) ethnicity. In order to adequately analyze each of these dimensions of structure and change, three complementary theories of sub-area composition and transition are utilized: (1) classical ecological theory, (2) neighborhood life-cycle theory, and (3) gentrification theory. These theories in turn suggest the utilization of three separate sets of independent measures for purposes of cross-sectional explanation and longitudinal prediction: (1) spatial variables, (2) housing variables, and (3) demographic variables.;The resolution of these two issues has suggested two major conclusions, one dealing with the long-term competition between the "traditionalist" and "revisionist" views of urban spatial structure and the other dealing with the related conflict between unidimensional and multidimensional analysis. The results of this study serve as testimony to the validity of the multidimensional "revisionist" view of urban spatial structure. While distance did in fact play a major role in determining the structure and change of neighborhoods, zonation was discovered to be only one of several sources of morphological permutation. Directional biases were found to be operating in association with each of the three dependent dimensions examined as well. And in addition to this zonal and sectoral differentiation, compositional factors served as major determinants of neighborhood structure and change. None of these technological, contextual, and compositional processes would have been predicted by sole reliance on the "traditionalist" paradigm with its unidimensional emphasis on measures of ecological distance.;Research hypotheses are then tested centering around two major issues: (1) spatial determinism and (2) the applicability of various urban analytical models. In terms of spatial determinism, analysis of variance procedures and stochastic analysis are employed to determine the relative contributions of distance (zone) and direction (sector) to the shaping of neighborhood structure and change. In terms of the applicability of the various explanatory models, discriminant function analysis is employed to ascertain the relative "fit" of the ecological, demographic, and housing variables. |
