IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mts/wpaper/201301.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Veblen in the Metropolis: Land Use Proximity in United States Urban Landscapes

Author

Listed:
  • E. Anthon Eff

Abstract

Some land uses are considered incompatible. When a parcel is bordered by parcels with incompatible land uses, external costs will impact the property owner. Collective action by property owners then results in land use regulations designed to restrict neighboring parcels from incompatible uses. The pattern of observed land use contiguities thus testifies to cultural notions regarding incompatible land uses. Using urban planning data, a GIS, and methods from social network analysis, this paper attempts to uncover the tacit rules of spatial proximity among land uses in a United States city. The most salient patterns are a separation between places of residence and places of work, a separation of single family homes from other residential land uses, a separation of rural land uses from everything else, and a separation of condominiums from everything else. The paper then attempts to tie these observed spatial patterns to ideas from Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel, and Mancur Olson. It is suggested that the United States urban landscape has been shaped by the ethos of the middle class under capitalism, especially the cult of the family and the need to display status.

Suggested Citation

  • E. Anthon Eff, 2013. "Veblen in the Metropolis: Land Use Proximity in United States Urban Landscapes," Working Papers 201301, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201301
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://capone.mtsu.edu/berc/working/ViM.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wendy Sarkissian, 1976. "The Idea of Social Mix in Town Planning: An Historical Review," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 13(3), pages 231-246, October.
    2. Offer, Avner, 2007. "The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199216628.
    3. Avner Offer, 2006. "The challenge of affluence: self-control and well-being since 1950," Working Papers 6020, Economic History Society.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Avner Offer, 2013. "Narrow Banking, Real Estate, and Financial Stability in the UK, c.1870-2010," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _116, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Avner Offer, 2012. "Self-interest, Sympathy and the Invisible Hand : From Adam Smith to Market Liberalism," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, vol. 1(2), pages 1-1, December.
    3. Avner Offer, 2012. "A Warrant for Pain: Caveat Emptor vs. the Duty of Care in American Medicine, c. 1970-2010," Oxford University Economic and Social History Series _102, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    4. Jeremy S. Brooks, 2013. "Avoiding the Limits to Growth: Gross National Happiness in Bhutan as a Model for Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(9), pages 1-25, August.
    5. Komlos, John & Brabec, Marek, 2011. "The trend of BMI values of US adults by deciles, birth cohorts 1882-1986 stratified by gender and ethnicity," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 234-250, July.
    6. Avner Offer, 2013. "Narrow banking, real estate, and financial stability in the UK, c.1870-2010," Oxford University Economic and Social History Series _116, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    7. Offer, Avner & Pechey, Rachel & Ulijaszek, Stanley, 2010. "Obesity under affluence varies by welfare regimes: The effect of fast food, insecurity, and inequality," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 297-308, December.
    8. David Madden, 2011. "The Impact of an Economic Boom on the Level and Distribution of Subjective Well-Being: Ireland, 1994–2001," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 667-679, August.
    9. Avner Offer, 2012. "Self-interest, Sympathy and the Invisible Hand : From Adam Smith to Market Liberalism," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, vol. 1(2), pages 1-1, December.
    10. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald & Bert Van Landeghem, 2009. "Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 528-538, 04-05.
    11. Offer, Avner & Pechey, Rachel & Ulijaszek, Stanley, 2010. "Obesity under affluence varies by welfare regimes: The effect of fast food, insecurity, and inequality," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 297-308, December.
    12. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Hypertension and happiness across nations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 218-233, March.
    13. Komlos John, 2016. "Has Creative Destruction become more Destructive?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(4), pages 1-12, October.
    14. Jean-François Mouhot, 2011. "Past connections and present similarities in slave ownership and fossil fuel usage," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 105(1), pages 329-355, March.
    15. Epaminondas Panas, 2013. "Homeorhesis and Indication of Association Between Different Types of Capital on Life Satisfaction: The Case of Greeks Under Crisis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 171-186, January.
    16. Francesco Andreoli & Eugenio Peluso, 2016. "So close yet so unequal: Reconsidering spatial inequality in U.S. cities," Working Papers 21/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    17. Andrew E. Clark & Ed Diener & Yannis Georgellis & Richard E. Lucas, 2008. "Lags And Leads in Life Satisfaction: a Test of the Baseline Hypothesis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(529), pages 222-243, June.
    18. Andrew McCulloch & John Mohan & Peter Smith, 2012. "Patterns of Social Capital, Voluntary Activity, and Area Deprivation in England," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(5), pages 1130-1147, May.
    19. Blanchflower, David G; Oswald, Andrew, 2011. "Antidepressants and Age," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 44, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    20. Chih Hoong Sin, 2002. "The Quest for a Balanced Ethnic Mix: Singapore's Ethnic Quota Policy Examined," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(8), pages 1347-1374, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    built environment; symbolism; land use patterns;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201301. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benjamin Jansen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efmtsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.