Testing Wirth: Predicting Density and Heterogeneity in the 19th-Century American City

Gergely Baics, Barnard College
Leah Meisterlin, Columbia University
Celia Arsen, Barnard College

Our current paper continues our exploration of the 1880 geocoded census microdata from the 39 American cities made publicly available by John Logan’s Urban Transition Historical GIS project based at Brown University. The starting point of our analysis is sociologist Louis Wirth’s famous definition of the city as a “relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.” We test this claim to see if Wirth's description accurately characterizes 19th Century American cities. In earlier papers, we have developed measures of population density at the block level, as well as isolation and diversity indices at appropriate spatial scales, to examine differing differences in experiences of density and heterogeneity both across cities and across population subgroups within cities. Our current paper will take the analysis one step further. We will now assign these density, diversity, and isolation measures to each of the 5.5 million individuals within the UTHGIS dataset. We will develop a model to predict any individual's experienced level of density or heterogeneity based on their ethnicity, socio-economic status, and other demographic information available in the census.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 134. Urban Economics