| This dissertation argues that, to be adequately understood, the process of regional, or metropolitan, "development" must be fully specified as a complex process of primary development, maturity, decline, and redevelopment, or recovery.; Interdisciplinary review of the urban studies literature (broadly defined) leads to the conclusion that, while numerous distinct bodies of disciplinary theory and research address the different stages of this complex process, a coherent view of the process as a whole is lacking. This study aspires to take the initial steps required to remedy that situation. It begins with the development of a hierarchy of community structure geography that includes individual property parcels, social blocks, neighborhoods, community districts, and incorporated places for the Kansas City metropolitan area. This is followed by an asset-based development indicator specification expressed in terms of a Local Area Development Profile. Specified indicator data tabulated for the community structure geography are used to present a GIS-based descriptive analysis of the Kansas City metropolitan area. A set of development typology indicators are constructed with the potential to characterize the primary development, maturity, and decline stages of the complex development process.; Notable methodological and empirical contributions of this portion of the study include the construction and use of a GIS-based community geographic hierarchy, the asset-based local area development indicator specification, construction of qualitative development typology indicators for race/ethnicity and social stratification (related to salient theoretical constructs prominent in the field of human ecology), and process typology indicators for primary development, maturity, and distress.; The final substantive chapter outlines a research agenda for explanatory analysis, featuring an integrative review of diverse theoretical views dealing with the different stages of the complex development process. One notable result of this is an integrated theory of the dynamics of neighborhood decline, specified in terms of the "components of decline."... |
