Veblen in the Metropolis: Land Use Proximity in United States Urban Landscapes

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Veblen in the Metropolis Land Use Proximity in
United States Urban Landscapes

• E. Anthon Eff
• Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro,
  TN

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• Why no pawn shops in shopping malls?
• No liquor stores near churches?
• No adult bookstores near schools?
• No nursing homes near cemeteries?
• Tacit rules of land use proximity
• Avoiding contagion of unlike things
• Anthropology formation of taboos

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• Unconscious preferences ? Tacit rules ?
  Collective action ? Landuse regulations ? Landuse
  associations.
• Empirical look at landuse associations can give
  sense of these unconscious preferences.
• Data all parcels in Davidson County, Tennessee
  (Nashville) 216,898 parcels, classified in 77
  landuses.

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• Calculate the probability that one land use will
  be adjacent to another.
• Adjacent two parcels adjacent when borders
  within 70 feet of each other.
• 216,898 parcels related in 2,397,367 proximate
  parcel pairs.

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Example of parcel proximity relationships
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matrix M each cell mij gives the number of times
that a parcel of land use i is proximate to a
parcel of land use j. (M is 77x77, only eight
rows and columns shown)
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Matrix M can be used to create the transition
matrix P, where each cell pij gives the
probability that a parcel of land use i is
proximate to a parcel of land use j.
(Eight of 77 rows and columns shown)
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matrix X each cell xij gives the expected
probability that a parcel of land use i is
proximate to a parcel of land use j.
The expected proximity matrix X can then be
compared with the actual proximity matrix P to
give matrix D D P - X
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Net Probability D P - X
These net probabilities represent the tacit rules
governing land use associations.
(Eight of 77 rows and columns shown)
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From Table 1 7 landuses with highest openness
(all commercial or industrial) and 7 landuses
with lowest openness (all respectable housing or
common area)
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Block Modeled Graph
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• Summary of tacit rules
• Single family home on city lot is most isolated
  from other land uses.
• Residential is isolated from commercial.
• Lower-status housing (apartments, mobile homes)
  tends to be more associated with commercial or
  rural land uses.

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• How do tacit rules of land use associations vary
  across space?
• Compliance less in low income areas?
• Compliance less in older areas?
• Use Jaccard distance (matrix E). For each parcel
  find mean of the distances between its landuse
  and the landuses of adjacent parcels. Call this
  mean distance.

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Structural Equivalence In order to compare the
similarity between i and j in the pattern of
their associations, one can take the Jaccard
distance between row i and row j of matrix D,
giving matrix E
eij2bij/(1bij)

(Eight of 77 rows and columns shown)
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For this parcel, calculate mean of distances
between its landuse and the landuses of adjacent
parcels
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Map colors Local G z-score for mean distance.
Darkest color is significantly high distance,
lightest color is significantly low distance.
Chart mean distance of parcels along transect.
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Inner City
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Subdivisions
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Subdivisions
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Inner City
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Tract means Mean distance for Single Family
Dwellings per Parcel, againstappraised value of
home and against median HH income
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Tract means Mean distance for Single Family
Dwellings per Parcel, againstpercentage black
and percentage white
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• Summary of variation over space
• Parcels more likely to be adjacent to unlike
  landuses toward city center.
• Higher income tracts and higher home appraised
  value tracts have homes more isolated from unlike
  landuses.
• Racial composition appears to have no effect on
  whether homes are adjacent to unlike landuses.
• Structure and homogeneity of suburbs serve to
  isolate homes from unlike landuses.

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• 18th century Europe, emerging capitalist middle
  class, erosion of traditions (Möser, Simmel)
• Old elite displaced (e.g., guild masters lose
  market to factory owners). Circulation of the
  elite (Pareto)
• Pecuniary valuations displace traditional values.
• Paternalistic relationships ? Instrumental
  relationships (e.g., serfs ? wage labor)
• Fashion cycles intensify work areas move out of
  home to different part of city home separates
  into public and private areas (Braudel)
• 19th century Europe, middle class cult of the
  family (domestic ideology), centered on home,
  provides new source of meaning (Frykman
  Löfgren)

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• Simmel
• High status seek to differentiate selves from low
  status. Low status seek to emulate high status.
• High status maintain distinctions through
• Constant innovation (fashion)
• Distinctions difficult to emulate (Veblen)
• Conspicuous consumption to signal status in
  period with rapid change in elite. (home as a
  display good homes public areas filled with
  display goods)
• Conspicuous leisure as the most potent signal of
  status. (Work areas removed from home. Work moved
  to different quarter of the city)
• Sumptuary laws

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• Sumptuary laws are collective action by high
  status, to maintain differentiation
• Boundary between status groups is a public good
  (Olson), benefiting all high status.
• Sumptuary laws important in maintaining boundary
  when emulation relatively easy (location is easy
  to emulate)
• Cheaters have incentive to help low status
  emulate high status location (chop elite homes
  infill with apartments)
• Collective action to coerce cheaters landuse
  regulations.

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• Summary
• Most salient separation is between single family
  home on city lot and commercial landuses.
• This separation based on
• the use of the home as a signal of status,
  removing from the home all trace of useful work.
• the domestic ideology family as the focus of
  life, separated from external world
• Landuse regulations function as sumptuary laws
  maintaining status boundary.