Clark University

Review
Author(s): David Lowenthal
Review by: David Lowenthal
Source: Economic Geography, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jul., 1966), pp. 276-277
Published by: Clark University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/142014
Accessed: 10-03-2015 23:45 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 23:45:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
276 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
the war. Regional variations exist in patterns
of residential segregation, but the tendency to
segregate appears to be a universal phenomenon.
In none of these cities was the index of segrega-
tion less than 60, with the greatest number of
cities clustered between values of 87 and 98
in 1960. The cities of the South are the most
segregated, yet its mean segregation index is
less than five percentage points above that
of the mean index for the nation as a whole.
The North Central region has the highest index
outside of the South. It was revealed that all
minority groups are segregated within the
nation's cities, both from one another and
from other segments of the white population,
but none are so highly segregated as is the
Negro population.
The factor of color is convincingly demon-
strated to represent the overriding factor con-
tributing to patterns of residential segregation.
A number of indexes of economic status are
employed in an attempt to predict patterns
of residential segregation by way of multiple
regression, but in no instance do any of these
measures account for a significant percentage
of the actual pattern of segregation. This leads
the authors to conclude that "improvement in
the economic status of Negroes is unlikely by
itself to alter prevailing patterns of residential
segregation. "
The second half of the book is concerned
with processes of neighborhood change and
follows the pattern employed by most sociolo-
gists with an ecological orientation. In order
to better explain the process of change a classi-
fication was devised that identifies the racial
state of a census tract during both an initial
year and a terminal year. The resulting cate-
gories are: (1) Established Negro areas; (2)
Stable Interracial Areas; (3) Consolidation;
(4) Displacement. In order for the processes of
change to be evaluated on a comparative basis
ten cities were selected for study. The ten
cities, which include Detroit, Cleveland, Phila-
delphia, St. Louis, Washington, Baltimore, New
Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Memphis,
are equally divided between the North and
the South. The very clear illustration of the
operation of distinct sets of processes of racial
change on the basis of region should be of
considerable interest to urban geographers and
planners. This will be especially true for those
who are familiar only with the northern ex-
perience. Neighborhood change in northern
cities during the period 1940-1960 was basically
related to consolidation, whereas consolidation
was less important in explaining racial residen-
tial patterns in southern cities. Displacement
or the transformation of an area from Negro
to white is uncommon in the North, as the
process of racial change is generally held to
be irreversible, but is not an unknown occurrence
in the South.
The type of residential change which takes
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 23:45:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
place is basically related to the demographic
pattern of the two populations. The rapid rate
of growth of the Negro population in the north-
ern group of cities fostered extensive neighbor-
hood change of the type identified as succession.
In cities where the rate of Negro in-migration
was high there was rapid expansion into pre-
viously white neighborhoods. This process is
referred to as invasion. The descriptive term
employed to specify the latter process is a rather
unfortunate choice, but since it has been adopted
by convention it is unlikely that it will be soon
abandoned. The substantive contribution of the
final three chapters of the book should do much
to dispel many of the myths long associated
with the Negro population and neighborhood
change. It is these chapters that new materials
are presented for the first time which refute
some of the findings based on previous studies
confined to a single city.
Appendix A, which is a lengthy description
of the host of measures that have been employed
to measure segregation, should be of special
interest to the methodologist. Not only are
these measures described but their shortcomings
are also specified. From a geographic viewpoint
the most glaring shortcoming of this major
contribution is the placing of the maps of resi-
dential change in the ten city group in an
appendix, rather than incorporating them ill
the text.
HAROLD M. ROSE
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The View from the Road, by DONALD APPLEYARD,
KEVIN LYNCH, and JOHN R. MYER. 64 pp.;
maps, diagrs., illustrs., bibliogr. Joint
Center for Urban Studies of the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology and Har-
vard University. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1964. $15.00. 15Y4 x 9Y2 inches.
Engineering and economics dominate most
studies of routes; this stimulating volume
focuses instead on the esthetic experience of
driving. Contemporary highway design seldom
transcends measures of camouflage and cos-
metics-hiding blight and eyesores, banning
billboards, landscaping for restful travel. The
authors of this book contend that roads should
be intimately linked with, not hidden from, the
terrain they traverse, so as to make even the
daily journey to work meaningful and exhilarat-
ing. "The view from the road can be a dramatic
play of space and motion, of light and texture,
all on a new scale: the driver would see how
the city is organized, what it symbolizes, how
people use it, how it relates to him. ...
Road-watching is a delight, and the highway
is-or at least might be-a work of art."
The View from the Road, like Kevin Lynch's
 BOOK REVIEWS
earlier The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass.,
1960), is a solidly empirical book. Drivers'
perceptions were recorded as they moved at
various speeds on several urban highways in
the East, most systematically along 6Y4 miles
of the Northeast Expressway from Revere to
downtown Boston. Sketches of dominant ob-
jects, surfaces, and other visual impressions
supplemented these stream-of-consciousness ob-
servations. A composite subjective landscape
emerged, showing what people actually saw,
how they saw it, and how they related it to
themselves.
A notation system expresses all these visual
impacts in diagrammatic form. There are
different sets of symbols for the apparent
motion of the observer and of his visual field, for
the nature and position of surrounding objects
and surfaces, for the proportions of space en-
closed in the visual field, for the intensity and
direction of light, for spatial sequences, and for
the direction of principal views. But the symbols
are so numerous and varied-some are wholly
abstract, others ideographic, still others pic-
torial-that the notations convey little of the
general impression and can be interpreted in
detail only with considerable effort.
Finally the authors show how routes could
be relocated and roadways and surroundings
designed to enhance the pleasure of driving.
Visual access to landmarks and to landscape
features that identify and enrich locality and
orientation; a wide range of pattern, texture,
and color in pavement, terrain, and building
material, displayed in an ordered sequence;
transitions from tunnelled enclosures to open
space; and changes in slope and curvature, speed
and acceleration, light and shadow, are some
of the considerations they stress.
The View from the Road deals principally
with the commuter's route into the central city.
Similar inquiries are needed for roads in other
environments and with other users. We should
also learn about the visual impact of roads on
residents and pedestrians, of whose milieu the
highway also forms part-all too often an in-
trusive part, jarring in appearance, daunting in
scale, disruptive in location. Such studies might
well utilize the techniques employed in this
pioneering volume. But they ought not emulate
its physical qualities. Scattered more or less at
random on the oversized pages of this cumbrous
book are small photographs, diagrammatic
sketches, bits of text with marginal numbers,
and large areas of white space. The idea of por-
traying sequential experience within the com-
pass of one page does not justify the scrappy
appearance of the whole. Nor does the design
justify the price of the book. At $15 it is beyond
the reach of most potential readers.
DAVID LOWENTHAL
A merican Geographical Society
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 23:45:24 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
277
Location and Land Use: Toward a General
Theory of Land Rent, by WILLIAM ALONSO.
xi and 201 pp.; diagrs., index. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1964.
$5.50. 8'2 x 534 inches.
At a casual glance, this book appears to
assume a considerable knowledge of mathe-
matics. In practice, by a skillful arrangement
of the text and a careful use of diagrams, the
author has made it possible for the non-mathe-
matician to follow most of the argument if he
will bother to learn the meanings attached to a
small number of symbols. The more sophisti-
cated sections are in effect elaborations of points
made in a simple and comprehensible manner
in the text.
To introduce his subject, the author briefly
traces the history of ideas concerning the nature
and origin of land value, from the eighteenth
century to date. Virtually all authors since
Ricardo and von Thanen have regarded land
value as arising from the advantages that one
site has over another for particular kinds of
activity or for specific users (firms or individ-
uals). Such advantages arise from the varying
nature of sites (Ricardo's case) or from location
(von Thanen), or from both in combination. By
a process of bidding which may be actual or
merely potential bidding-between users and
uses, each site is allocated to the highest bid.
If the market economy functions without any
impediment, the highest bid will be made by
that use/user for which the disadvantages of
being at some other site are the greatest. This
approach is common ground to most writers,
and it has been highly developed in the context
of agricultural location. Rather less attention
has been given to the question of intra-urban
patterns of location and most of the work in
this particular field has borrowed von Thtinen's
ideas on agricultural location, in which the
central theme is distance from a single market
center and the resulting pattern a series of con-
centric circles of various land uses.
Alonso accepts this approach and applies
it to the problem of intra-urban patterns of
land use. In itself, this is orthodox procedure,
but the author makes an important contribu-
tion by directing attention to: (1) the distribu-
tion of residential land uses, particularly to
different quality levels of residential use (tene-
ments, suburban villas, etc.). (2) The fact that
in establishing the relative locations of land
uses it is important also to consider the size of
plots demanded. Both of these points have
been curiously neglected in the literature, de-
spite the fact that von ThiUnen made specific
reference to the question of farm size. The
other significant contribution made by Alonso
is a formulation of the manner in which bids
for plots of land can be determined if the neces-
sary data are available.
The problem that Alonso sets out to explore