Mental Maps of the City: Suburban Preference Patterns

Abstract

Many sets of observations have shown that intra-urban migration is generally oriented outwards, away from the City centre. Two major suggested explanations for this directional bias are Hoyt's concept of the sectoral structuring of socio-economic status residential patterns and Adams's ideas concerning the shape of the mental images of the City which its residents hold. The present paper presents an investigation of the mental maps of some sample respondents in the Christchurch urban area, New Zealand, which asks whether these images are influenced both by the perceived socioeconomic status of the various suburbs and a restricted view of the City. The results are encouraging and suggest that both Hoyt and Adams may have been correct in formulating their ideas. It is becoming commonplace within urban research to criticise the widely-used models of intra-urban residential patterns as inappropriate. Not all would agree with this, however, so further testing is required. Among the more important aspects needing further investigation are the assumptions on which the models are based, since if these are irrelevant then the validity of the models is extremely unlikely. The aim of the present paper is such an inquiry with reference to Hoyt's sectoral model of the residential patterns of socio-economic status groups.