Charles G. Schmidt

Ethnic Minority Small Business: A Comparative Analysis of Restaurants in Denver.

Significant ethnic minority business growth has occurred in the United States in the post-World War II period. The self-employment pattern of ethnic minority business, particularly the success of Asian-immigrant small business, is currently explained by two different hypotheses: the social resources explanation and the class resources explanation. While the former approach attributes the large number of small business enterprises and their success to the existence of such social resources as rotating credit associations, a protected market, and a labor source within Asian American communities, the latter argues that success instead is caused by greater investment of human and financial capital by these immigrants. The present study compares the self-employment pattern of the restaurant industry operated by African Americans and immigrant Chinese in Denver. Contrasts and similarities in ownership characteristics, start-up capital, location, soical networks, and economic significance prompted this study to ...

A comparative location analysis of a retail activity: The gasoline service station

This study focuses on the competitive processes and locational patterns of a convenience retail activity within two urban areas exhibiting distinct differences in operational characteristics. Impacts of various economic, demographic, and political environmental factors on the distribution of gasoline service stations in urbanized Hong Kong and metropolitan Denver are examined. Measurement of distributional patterns (utilizing nearest-neighbor and spatial association statistics) and socioeconomic/demographic influences (employing regression analysis) reveal remarkable similarities between the two areas. Investigation of several site-related characteristics (zoning and intersection orientation) suggests that they may be significant agglomerative influences accounting both for the consistent location patterns as well as the weak explanatory power of demand variables.

Evolution of Urban Spatial Cognition: Patterns of Change in Guangzhou, China

This paper includes an analysis of the evolution of urban spatial cognition over time among a sample of Chinese students attending Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China. Changes in the features of sketch maps, based on classifications developed by Lynch, Appleyard, as well as Golledge, are examined. The slow evolution of urban cognition and the tendency to construct maps of the same style and structure over time are noted. Explanations for the absence of changes hypothesized by various investigators are offered.

Impacts of Changing Racial Composition Upon Commercial Land Use Succession and Commercial Structure A Comparative Neighborhood Analysis

This empirical study focuses on the relationships between changes in neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics and alterations in the number as well as the mix of com mercial enterprises. Three Denver neighborhoods that differed in population growth rates, income changes, and shifts in racial composition over the 1960-1970 study period are selected for comparative analysis. Significant differences in commercial mobility patterns and commercial structural change between neighborhoods are identified. The research results suggest that change in racial composition is a major force affecting neighborhood commercial structural change while income shifts appear to play a less significant role.

Firm Linkage Structure and Structural Change: A Graph Theoretical Analysis

context of input-output research. The variety of national and regional inputoutput studies has provided useful insights into the economic structural characteristics of industries and regions, and the influence of linkage structure upon the transmission of growth. At the same time, the analysis of interindustry flows for different time periods has contributed to our understanding of structural change, and assisted in evaluating the forecasting utility of the input-output framework [1; 15; 12]. Research into the nature and influence of various kinds of external economies

An analysis of firm relocation patterns in metropolitan Denver, 1974–76

This paper examines geographic patterns of firm relocation in the Denver metropolitan area and factors responsible for the decision to move. A sample of 106 manufacturing, commercial, and service enterprises that relocated between 1974 and 1976 are analyzed. Major relationships between selected business operational characteristics, distance moved, and reasons for relocation are discussed. A comparative analysis of firms is undertaken to examine significant differences in relocation and new site selection factors by origin-destination, type of industry, and type of operation. Firm growth is identified as the primary stimulus for relocations and as an important force limiting spatial searches for alternative locations. Market centrality, site economics, and agglomeration economies are shown to be major constraints governing the selection of new sites. Several major issues associated with governmental policy influences upon firm relocations are considered briefly within the context of the empirical results.

Residential Preferences in China

This study is an analysis of residential preferences of a sample of students at six Chinese universities. Respondents indicated the importance of site conditions in their residential preferences. Associations between conditions and choices were measured by regression and factor analyses. Implications for migration policies and regional development are discussed. (EXCERPT)

URBAN SPATIAL COGNITION: A CASE STUDY OF GUANGZHOU, CHINA

The objective of this study is to investigate the quantity and quality of knowledge of the urban environment possessed by Guangzhou residents. Sketch maps constructed by 146 first-year college geography majors are categorized on the basis of accuracy and dominant elements. Factors contributing to the frequency and type of elements included on maps are considered. Relationships among map coverage, map detail, the urban environment, and respondent characteristics are discussed. The absence of detail, distinct information distance-decay effects, and the fragmented character of maps reflect early stages of information processing by new urban arrivals and restricted travel fields of respondents.

Changing milieu and in situ locational adjustment: A case study of Pacific Northwest iron and steel firms

An important type of firm location decision is the in site or in place locational adjustment. The dynamic nature of the economic milieu necessitates continued reassessment and reorganization of internal resources by the firm. Economic geographers have become increasingly interested in the in site adjustment process and the conditions associated with various types of “adjustment paths” followed by firms. This study of twenty-one Pacific Northwest iron and steel firms during an eight year period identifies two types of in site locational adjustments made under varied conditions of economic growth by firms of different size, product mix and competitive position.

“Room to Grow”: Urban Ambitions and the Limits to Growth in Weld County, Colorado

This study reconsiders the political conditions behind the geographically extensive pattern of urbanization in the United States by focusing on a rapidly urbanizing county on the northeast fringe of the Denver metropolitan area. Unusual for Colorado but typical of the industrialized northeast where this pattern first emerged, Weld County has a high concentration of small towns, the primary repository of statutory authority and ideological legitimacy to convert agricultural land to urban use. The urbanization of Weld County in the 1990s was amplified by the expansion of the towns into their surrounding farmland, which flooded the market with newly urbanized land. The study goes on to consider the prospects of this distinctively American political form in the wake of the property tax revolts of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the structural changes in the American economy during the past 30 years.