Social Accounts for Urban-Centered Regions

Abstract

Social accounts are important for tracing the complex interactions of social and economic phenomena within a unified frame work. The concepts of central place theory and the ecological psychology of Roger Barker jointly offer a means for constructing social accounts based on time people spend in behavior settings within Functional Eco nomic Areas. Barker's concept of behavior setting genotypes translates readily into standard categories in the economic censuses and other pub lished data systems, as is demonstrated here by linking Barker's data on private enterprise genotypes to the selected business functions used by Borchert and Adams to classify trade centers into hierarchical levels.