Abstract
The role in the description of urban form attributable to specific manifestations of the trip-making behavior of spatially-defined groups of persons residing within the Detroit Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area is inductively established through exploration into regularities in selected data characterizing Minor Civil Divisions. All data were obtained from the 1965 Detroit Regional Transportation and Land Use Study. Dimensions of this role are developed mathematically through comparative principal components factor analyses of the interrelationships between the Minor Civil Divisions in terms of the flows of persons travelling among the areas and in terms of measures of the economic activities within the areas and the socio-economics, demographics and travel decisions of their respective populations. These dimenisons are then interpreted cartographically, and linkages are defined between the spatial distributions of Minor Civil Divisions with particular evaluations on the new descriptive dimensions and the location of major transportation facilities, and between the distributions and patterns of urban development. The results expand the realm of urban ecological studies to the inclusion of transportation demand and supply phenomena.