Detecting urban socio-professional structures, methodological guidelines, an application: Volos

Abstract

In this article we present a method aiming at summarizing and succinctly presenting census data referring to the socioprofessional structure of residential areas in mid and large sized cities. Evidently, the degree of accuracy in the obtained result depends on the number and content of the socioprofessional variables and the size of the spatial units used in the analysis. The method consists of a combination of correspondence analysis (summarizing the socioprofessional variables) and hierarchical clustering (grouping the spatial units in respect to the summarized variables). Finally, mapping the clustering result reveals the spatial structure of the city's socioprofessional division. The urban area of Volos is used to illustrate the method throughout the article.