A Research on the Socio-spatial Structure and Social Networks in a Metropolitan Area

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The purpose of this study is to analyze systematically how community traits, especially urbanism, affect social networks. Prior to the research, ecological factorial analysis of Nagoya Metropolitan area was performed to construct a typology of the communities, from which five communities of different types were selected as research fields, where our survey research on personal networks was conducted. The findings are as follow : The number of kin decreased with urbanism only for those who had grown up within the Tokai region including Nagoya Metropolitan area, i.e.localites, mainly because of decreasing number of local kin with urbanism among them ; the number of neighbors also decreased with urbanism. This effect was most apparent among those male respondents who had grown up within the region ; the number of friends decreased with urbanism, only for the localites, because of decreasing number of local friends with urbanism among them. The number of middle-distant friends, however, increased with urbanism only for the localites. The number of long distant friends was not associated with urbanism. Instead, those who had grown up outside the region had more long distant friends than the localites, and the more educated the more having long distant friends.In sum, the decline of kin and neighbors hypothesis is true only for those who had grown up within the Tokai region ; the rise of friendship hypothesis is wrong ; but the hypothesis claiming that the number of middle distant friends increases with urbanism only among the localites is still maintained. Thus, the modified subcultural theory that takes residential mobility into account fits better than the original one.