| Social area analysis is an analytical technique developed in the 1940s and 1950s for analyzing citywide differentiation (Yeh et al. 1995) and is identified principally with the work of Shevky and Bell (White, M., 1987). With the development of the statistical technique of factor analysis, social area analysis was replaced by “factorial ecology,” whereby, rather than create indexes of social variation, the several variables could be subjected to factor analysis procedures. These multivariate analytical methods provided urban social geographers with a tool to measure social dimensionality and associated spatial patterning of cities. A popular multivariate technique of this type has been factorial analysis.; Factorial studies have been conducted on both developed and developing world cities with various limitations. One major limitation is that many of the available studies are limited to only a single source of information even though the importance of integrating information from different sources for the study of social structure of cities has been highlighted by many researchers (Murdie, 1968; Davies and Murdie, 1991; Morris and Pyle, 1972; Lo, 1986; Kasarda and Berry, 1977). Furthermore, several of the available studies are based on data obtained from only one type of spatial unit, namely census tracts (or polygons). Moreover, many available studies, especially in the developing world, were not established with an appropriate set of variables. For example, while the poor have been known to play a dominant role in shaping the social fabric of the cities of the developing world, their basic characteristics have not been adequately defined or measured. Census data do not provide detailed information on the poor and, therefore, alternatives sources of data or methods of study should be considered.; The present study attempts to fill the gap of our knowledge by demonstrating how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools can be used to integrate information provided not only by different sizes of one spatial unit, which has been a common problem that most researchers have highlighted, but also by various sizes of different spatial units, i.e., polygons, lines and points.; Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, was chosen as the case study as it possesses all the basic characteristics common to cities of the developing world. The researcher was confronted with numerous problems other than the critical problem mentioned above. Major problems included disorganized-data, maps with numerous errors, information not in digital form, and census information that failed to analyze key concerns.; In this thesis the researcher applied simple raster GIS tools to address the critical issues related to the data and maps. Data given by different spatial-units and sizes were converted to a compatible format by developing innovative methods. Finally, the researcher explored the social structure of Colombo, Sri Lanka, using data integrated from different sources. Quantitative methods such as factor and cluster analyses, database tools, and GIS techniques were used to reveal the city's social structure and the resulting spatial patterns. These methods can provide geographers, sociologists, and planners alike with tools to produce precise measurements of the differential character of areas within a city. |
