LOCATIONAL ASPECTS OF COMMERCIAL BANKING AT THE INTRAURBAN SCALE: THE CASE OF ATLANTA (RANK ORDER, DISEQUILIBRIUM, HIERARCHY; GEORGIA)

Finance beyond the confines of the central business district has been a much neglected topic among urban geographers. Most research efforts in this area have been directed toward rationalizing the locational criteria of low order establishments such as commercial bank branches. The topics of micro-level externalities, information linkages, corporate hierarchies and specialized functions--topics that have had center stage in the discussion of the downtown financial district--have never been addressed at the metropolitan-wide scale of analysis. This lack of attention has denied the rich diversity of financial establishments located outside of the central business district, just as it has, in fact, tacitly denied the evolving complexity of the modern American metropolis. This dissertation was an attempt to redress these oversights.; The three primary questions were (1) are there intermediate level banking functions located outside the central business district of Atlanta; (2) is the rank order of commercial banking centers parallel to that of the city's rank order of commercial and office centers; and, (3) if such parallelism, or rank order equilibrium, does not exist, what are the disequilibrating forces working against this theoretically expected arrangement.; The answer to the first question is unequivocally yes. The location of community bank head offices and the regional branch offices of large metropolitan banks beyond the downtown financial district clearly establishes the presence of intermediate level banking functions outside of the CBD. The answer to the second question is no. Many highly ranked foci of banking activity are located in old town centers that serve as seats of local government but contain very little in the way of office and commercial activity, while many of Atlanta's largest business activity centers are situated well down the city's rank order of banking centers.; The factors contributing to this rank order disequilibrium are fourfold: (1) Many of Atlanta's largest business activity centers are of quite recent origin, reflecting the dramatic impact of regional shopping malls and office parks on the commercial structure of the city. The resulting rank order instability has made it virtually impossible for all but the most demand-sensitive activities to keep pace. (2) In Georgia, prohibitive branching regulations have, until very recently, made it very difficult for the large regional banks to gain market penetration in the rapidly growing suburban counties of Atlanta. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI...