Abstract
The main purpose of this study is to investigate actual conditions of the locality in terms of housing circumstances on the city-wide in Japan. In this paper, the author deals with the classification of cities from the viewpoint of urbanization by following process; 1. To study conceptually on the urbanization from the viewpoint of housing circumstances. 2. To attempt a principal component analysis by 40 indices on housing circumstances and to find out the principal component which represents the urbanization. 3. To classify 327 cities in Japan by the factor scores of three FACTORs which represent the urbanization, and to investigate on the geographical distribution of these classified cities. The following fact became clear after the above investigations. The FACTOR 1 means the characteristics of urbanity, and the FACTOR 2 explains the changeability of population, and the FACTOR 3 elucidates the centrality in the regional construction and functions. The author has applied this three FACTORs to classify 327 cities. This classification can explain various characteristics of housing circumstances.
