The Cognitive Organization of the North American City: Empirical Evidence

In the literature on cognitive maps, studies of the cognitive representations of specific areas are common. Much less adequately represented are mental maps of general applicability to a diversity of specific areas. In an attempt to adduce such general rules of the cognitive organization of space, two case studies of the North American city are discussed. The first involves student expectations of land-use geography and reveals strong senses of residential segregation and the clustering of commercial land use. The second examines the social geography of the city, constructed on the basis of expectations of the social and neighborhood characteristics of four housing groups: central-city renter, central-city owner, suburban renter, and suburban owner. Although the general rules revealed are reasonable, the contribution of the central-city apartment dweller to metropolitan social geography is seen as quite exceptional.