Veblen in the Metropolis: Land Use Proximity in United States Urban Landscapes E. Anthon Eff Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN

Why no pawn shops in shopping malls? No liquor stores near churches? No adult bookstores near schools? No nursing homes near cemeteries? What are the (tacit) rules of land use proximity? –Instrumental? (health; efficiency) –Ceremonial? (status, power; superstition, religion)

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.

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.

Example of parcel proximity relationships

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)

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)

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

Net Probability:D = P - X (Eight of 77 rows and columns shown) These net probabilities represent the tacit rules governing land use associations.

(Eight of 77 rows and columns shown) 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: e ij =2b ij /(1+b ij )

From Table 1: 7 landuses with highest openness (all commercial or industrial) and 7 landuses with lowest openness (all respectable housing or common area)

Block Modeled Graph

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 land uses.

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.

For this parcel, calculate mean of distances between its landuse and the landuses of adjacent parcels

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.

Inner City

Subdivisions

Inner City

Tract means: Mean distance for Single Family Dwellings per Parcel, against appraised value of home and against median HH income

Tract means: Mean distance for Single Family Dwellings per Parcel, against percentage black and percentage white

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.

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

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; home’s “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

Sumptuary laws are collective action by high status, to maintain differentiation –Boundary maintenance is a collective 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.

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.