Burgess and Hoyt in Los Angeles: testing the Chicago models in an automotive-age American city

Abstract

For much of the twentieth century, the “Chicago models” proposed by E. W. Burgess in the 1920s, Homer Hoyt in the 1930s, and Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman in 1945 dominated discussions of the spatial form of cities in the United States. The changes that have subsequently occurred in American urban geography naturally raise questions about the continuing relevance of the models. In recent years, a “Los Angeles School” in geography and urban studies has dismissed the Chicago models as outdated. But the critics have provided little empirical evidence in support of their claims. Identifying exogenous amenities—those of distance from the city center, terrain, and waterfronts—as central elements in the Chicago models, we analyzed the relation of these factors to the patterns of income in Los Angeles and Chicago using spatial statistical regression. The newer, automobile-age city closely follows, while the older city of Chicago deviates substantially from, the patterns predicted in the classical Chicago models. These models may best describe the most recently built American cities and may be more relevant than ever today in explaining the dynamics of urban form.

Keywords:

• Burgess, E. W.
• Chicago models
• environmental amenities
• Los Angeles school
• urban form

Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and reviewers for their comments and the Research Council of Colgate University for summer support.

Notes

1. For another dismissal of the Chicago models phrased in almost identical terms, see Hise, Dear, and Schockman (1996, p. 12). The main elements of the LA School critique are presented in concise form by Dear and Flusty (1998). For a forum on the Chicago-Los Angeles debate, see Conzen (2008).

2. Likewise, the sociologist Charles H. Cooley, a forerunner of the Chicago School, wrote at the very outset of the electric trolley era that “dwelling sites … commonly seek as great a distance from the center as the means of getting back and forth will permit” (Cooley, 1894, p. 346).

3. A number of higher order variants of the model have been developed, though they fall outside the scope of our research. For the higher order models and their references, see Anselin (2001).

4. A reviewer suggests that California’s Proposition 13, approved by the voters in 1978, may affect the patterns of income in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the state by lessening mobility and creating a greater-than-expected heterogeneity in income groups within neighborhoods. If so, however, the strength of the patterns in our results is all the more notable.

5. Viewed at a very broad scale, however, Chicago as early as 1910 displayed the zonation of residential status that Burgess predicted (Gardner, 2001, p. 310).