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INFLUENCES OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ACTION SPACE ON COGNITIVE MAPS: IMAGES OF LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY* Ronald D. Garst Ability to successfully navigate a complex urban environment is related to one's experience and personal characteristics. Those with most numerous social, organizational, and business contacts are expected to have the most complete knowledge of a city, and the most frequently traversed routes are likely to coincide with areas of most complete knowledge. Although each individual has a unique set of experiences with the city, this does not preclude a certain commonality of knowledge. Socio-economic and ethnic stratification and residential propinquity suggest that people residing in the same neighborhood should have similar patterns of urban knowledge, remembering the same buildings, landmarks, open spaces, and views. (1) Urban knowledge can be expressed through the cognitive map, which is the result of "a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in his every day spatial environment." (2) A cognitive map of a city is, therefore, an expression of an individual's knowledge about the city. This study compares the characteristics of composite cognitive maps drawn by respondents in three areas of Louisville, Kentucky, with several socio-economic, social interaction, and action space variables. The basic hypothesis is that individuals with highest socioeconomic status, most extensive social interaction, and most expansive action spaces, are able to draw the most accurate and complete cognitive maps. (3) RESEARCH METHODS. Three census tracts in Louisville, Kentucky, were selected for the study. Approximately one-quarter of each tract Dr. Garst is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD 20742. * This study was conducted with the assistance of J. Kellogg, A. Misallati, B. Osuamkpe, G. Pauer, H. Price, D. Shephard, and J. Stratton. 114Southeastern Geographer was selected as a study site. Census block data indicated that each of the sites selected was representative of the entire tract. Area A is in the western part of the city in the heart of a predominantly black section. Blacks comprised 93 percent of the tract's population, and all of those interviewed were black. The median family income was $5,076 in 1969, or 51.7 percent of the city-wide median of $9,814. Area B, located in the southwestern part of the city, is a white lowermiddle income neighborhood which had a median family income of $8,556 in 1969, or 87.2 percent of the city-wide median. Area C is located in the southeastern part of the city in an upper-middle income neighborhood where the median family income was $16,937 in 1969, or 172.6 percent of the city-wide median. (4) The areas selected permitted a comparison of cognitive images of three different socioeconomic groups. A two-part interview was administered to 152 respondents (37 in Area A, 59 in Area B, and 56 in Area C). The first portion of the interview consisted of questions eliciting information about: 1) The social and economic backgrounds of the respondent, 2) the respondent 's action space, including distance to work, to formal and informal organization meetings, and to various types of shopping facilities, and 3) the number of years the respondent had been resident in Kentucky, in Louisville, in the neighborhood (an area within two city blocks of the respondent's residence), and in the presently occupied house. The second part of the interview required the respondent to draw a map of Louisville. Orleans, in his study of cognitive mapping in Los Angeles, found that people felt intimidated when asked to draw a map upon blank paper. This resulted in a high refusal rate and highly disoriented maps. (5) Following experimentation in Lexington, Kentucky, with several types of base maps containing varying amounts of information, a base map of Louisville was developed for the study which included the Ohio River and the major freeways as points of reference which could be used by respondents in estimating distance and direction. Even so, the map construction part of the interview was highly subjective. The interviewer's skill in explaining the purpose of the map, as well as the...

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