Richard P. Greene

DEFINING JOB CONCENTRATIONS: THE LOS ANGELES CASE

This paper aims to develop a simple technique for defining employment concentrations, suitable for application to any large North American urban area, and to implement it for a major area. Following a review of earlier work, the 1990 distribution patterns of population, resident workers, and jobs in greater Los Angeles are mapped, summarized in tabular form, and compared. After a consideration of alternative approaches, employment concentrations are delineated using census tracts, with the 1990 employment/residence ratio as chief criterion, rather than job density. Of 120 concentrations defined, 11 have more than 100,000 jobs each and 28 have at least 50,000. Downtown Los Angeles, still the regions largest concentration, now is rivaled by the relatively new Irvine. Comparable 1980 data show job growth in most concentrations, although increases Downtown have been modest. The industry profiles of the largest concentrations vary widely, especially as to the significance of manufacturing, which dominates som...

POVERTY CONCENTRATION MEASURES AND THE URBAN UNDERCLASS

The population in poverty in American cities has become confined to a subset of areas known as extreme poverty areas. These areas are the home of what has become known popularly as the urban “underclass.” Many definitions of the underclass are based on nonspatial measures of poverty concentration that do not adequately describe geographic confinement. A unique data set comprised of geographic coordinates attached to extreme poverty areas for 30 large American cities in 1970 and 1980 makes it possible to measure the changing spatial extent of poverty concentrations. Spatial statistics are used to derive descriptive measures of the changing size, form, and distribution of extreme poverty areas in different regional settings.

Rangeland to cropland conversions as replacement land for prime farmland lost to urban development

Abstract Data from the 1997 National Resources Inventory (NRI) are used in this study to examine recent trends in the conversion of cropland to urban land with special attention paid to the spatial distribution of these conversions relative to rangeland to cropland conversions. Our findings are that the approximately 11 million acres of cropland converted to urban land between 1982 and 1997 was coincident with an equal amount of rangeland converting to cropland. The rangeland to cropland conversions equate to replacement lands for cropland lost to urban encroachment. Approximately one third of the cropland lost to urban development occurs on prime farmland while the new cropland converted from rangeland is more likely to be irrigated as it resides principally in the arid western United States. The findings are discussed in light of a sustainable land use system perspective.

Chicago's New Immigrants, Indigenous Poor, and Edge Cities

The settlement pattern of new immigrants in the Chicago urban region diverges significantly from previous immigration periods, when employment was concentrated in the urban core. In recent decades, the rate of employment decentralization in the Chicago area has accelerated, giving rise to edge cities, which are acquiring an increasing share of the regions total employment. As a result, the new immigrants are in a far more favorable geographic position than the regions indigenous poor to compete in the local unskilled labor market. Meanwhile, with the absence of new immigrants settling the regions traditional port-of-entry neighborhoods, thus not replacing the exiting middle class, large sections of Chicagos urban core are being bypassed, further isolating the indigenous poor from the economic mainstream.

The farmland conversion process in a polynucleated metropolis

Abstract The conversion of farmland to urban land uses is analyzed for a study area on the fringe of Chicago (USA) for the period between 1975 and 1990. Several geographic information system databases are developed to examine the amount and quality of farmland being lost to urban development. The results show that “edge cities” are redefining the landscapes of the urban fringe where low-density residential uses are replacing prime farmland at a rapid rate. A national-level database is used to compare the Chicago area results with other large urban areas of the USAs Midwest. Most large cities of the Midwest reveal a similar pattern of development replacing prime farmland on the urban fringe.

Modeling Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Using a Geographic Information System Approach

Agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution, primarily sediment and nutrients, is the leading source of water-quality impacts to surface waters in North America. The overall goal of this study was to develop geographic information system (GIS) protocols to facilitate the spatial and temporal modeling of changes in soils, hydrology, and land-cover change at the watershed scale. In the first part of this article, we describe the use of GIS to spatially integrate watershed scale data on soil erodibility, land use, and runoff for the assessment of potential source areas within an intensively agricultural watershed. The agricultural non-point source pollution (AGNPS) model was used in the Muddy Creek, Ontario, watershed to evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies in decreasing sediment and nutrient [phosphorus (P)] pollution. This analysis was accompanied by the measurement of water-quality parameters (dissolved oxygen, pH, hardness, alkalinity, and turbidity) as well as sediment and P loadings to the creek. Practices aimed at increasing year-round soil cover would be most effective in decreasing sediment and P losses in this watershed. In the second part of this article, we describe a method for characterizing land-cover change in a dynamic urban fringe watershed. The GIS method we developed for the Blackberry Creek, Illinois, watershed will allow us to better account for temporal changes in land use, specifically corn and soybean cover, on an annual basis and to improve on the modeling of watershed processes shown for the Muddy Creek watershed. Our model can be used at different levels of planning with minimal data preprocessing, easily accessible data, and adjustable output scales.

POVERTY-AREA INSTABILITY: THE CASE OF CHICAGO

Recent studies have shown that (officially designated) poverty areas in large American cities have expanded geographically each decade since their inception in 1960. The territorial expansion of poverty areas in the 1970s was especially severe in Chicago, where new poverty-area growth exceeded the geographic extent of preexisting poverty areas. In the more recent decade of the 1980s, the expansion of Chicagos poverty areas slowed significantly. An analysis ofthis expansion process for Chicago, using 1970, 1980, and 1990 census data, illustrates that the movement of neighborhoods into and out of poverty is related to their previous poverty level, relative location, and rate of population loss. The recent slowdown in the geographic expansion of Chicagos poverty areas is highly correlated with the declining city-wide rate of population loss. Irrespective of this slowdown in territorial expansion, the residential function of Chicagos poverty areas is becoming increasingly obsolete as fewer and fewer people...

Threat to high market value agricultural lands from urban encroachment: A national and regional perspecitve

Abstract A large proportion of the nations cropland that produces high market value agricultural products is within close proximity to fast growing metropolitan areas. The conversion of high value cropland to urban land uses is taking place within and adjacent to metropolitan areas at the same time that cropland is increasing in nonmetropolitan areas with marginal lands. This study examines the spatial pattern of the nations high market value cropland in relation to fast growing metropolitan regions, areas of increasing cropland, and areas with marginal lands. A case study of a rapidly urbanizing region in northern Illinois demonstrates the rate at which high value agricultural land is being lost to urban encroachment. The findings raise a number of policy questions that are difficult to address in the absence of national farmland protection policies.

Introduction—All the World is not Los Angeles, Nor Chicago: Paradigms, Schools, Archetypes, and the Urban Process

The return of the Association of American Geographers’ Annual Meeting to Chicago in 2006 after a decade visiting elsewhere did not in itself signify concern for the city’s historic role in shaping American geographers’ perceptions of urban structure and organization in contemporary life. There is a lot more to the discipline than curiosity about mere urban life. But when the Association does return to the place renowned for a longlived and widely recognized “model” of urban process, urban geographers cannot help but think of that connection. It was felt locally that the event could not pass without acknowledging Chicago’s singular role in that respect and confronting the serious challenge to its continuing relevance posed by the significant literature pointing to Los Angeles as a more appropriate model for understanding contemporary trends, at least among those who think it essential to acknowledge that we live in postmodern times. History takes a while to catch up with the claims of the avant garde. With respect to the frequency with which cities in the forefront of American cultural evolution have been visited by the AAG, Chicago has played host seven times (eight, if the 29th meeting in Evanston is allowed), beginning in 1907. There might have been a ninth occasion had the profession’s sentiment concerning events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention not diverted the 1969 meeting to the major “metropolis” of Ann Arbor, Michigan. By contrast, New York, first chosen in 1905, has played host just six times. Los Angeles was not admitted into this select league until 1981, and has been host only one other time since (in 2002). There is much ground still to be made up on that score. However, no matter how incidental these statistics are, they do reflect, however tangentially, the salience of Chicago in American life during the 20th century, even had Robert Park and Ernest Burgess not chosen to designate it an academic archetype. Meanwhile, a prodigious literature has been accumulating on the varied geographies of Los Angeles, and for the most part this literature has highlighted the departures that L.A. represents from the classical urban concepts associated with the Chicago model.

Shifting patterns of suburban dominance: the case of Chicago from 2000 to 2010

The main map Shifting Patterns of Suburban Dominance: The Case of Chicago from 2000 to 2010 depicts the dramatic outward shift in population from Chicagos old industrial suburbs to the regions new economy suburbs. In a prior study, a rank mobility index (RMI) was applied to Chicagos suburbs and mapped using a graduated symbol map to show dramatic changes in the suburban hierarchy from 1990 to 2000. This paper updates the earlier study with results from the 2010 census so as to explore changes in Chicagos suburban hierarchy during the 2000–2010 period. We use a Getis-Ord Gi approach to geo-visualize the regional difference and change for these rank shifts. The resulting map reveals a contemporary urban development pattern consistent with those depicted in early twentieth-century models of Chicagos growth.