Since the late 1990’s, the patterns caused by residential differentiation have been changing within Japan’s metropolitan areas. Preceding studies have revealed that the sectorial structure which is said to reflect the segregation by means of differences in socio-economic status of the residents has been fading. The population group with high socio-economic status has come to occupy central parts of metropolitan areas and this trend highlights the concentric structure in the social atlas of the Japan’s metropolitan areas.
The author recognizes internal migrations as the factor of the changing patterns of segregation and analyzes age-and-occupation specific net migration (only male) within the Tokyo metropolitan area.
As the first step, the changes of distributions of three occupational groups (white, grey (sales and service related occupations) and blue-collar workers) from 1990 to 2010 are analyzed. Correlations between distances from Tokyo station (the center of the Tokyo metropolitan area) and percentages of white-collar workers are positive and getting stronger. The result is opposite in the case of blue-collar workers: negative correlations are getting stronger. In the case of grey-collar worker, the situation is not that simple. The correlation indexes are positive and highest of the three occupational groups in 1990 and 2000. This means that maps of the percentage of grey-collar workers by municipality show clear concentric structures in 1990 and 2000. However, the correlation index in 2010 is quite low and the map has changed as to show a sectorial pattern.
The configurations of migration of the prefectures are differentiated. The special wards of Tokyo (Central part of the Tokyo metropolitan area) as a whole is characterized by the net gain of age group of 20’s and net loss of 30’s. The latter is mainly occupied by grey and blue-collar migrants. It is assumed that they relocate to the outskirt of the metropolitan area where the land price is lower in order to obtain their owner-occupied houses.
Saitama (northern suburb) and Chiba prefecture (eastern suburb) show similarity in the conditions of net migration: Net gains of the two prefectures are relatively small in early 20’s, whereas they receive substantive inflows of populations aged 30’s and 40’s in which proportions of grey and blue-collar workers are relatively large. On the contrary, there are little inflows of grey and blue-collar workers into Kanagawa prefecture (southern suburb). Kanagawa prefecture, where a lot of R&D facilities are located, is also characterized by large net gain of specialists in the age group of late 20’s.
The data of 90 municipalities which are located within the Tokyo metropolitan area and individually populated over 200 thousand is available. After the application of factor analysis to the geographical matrix (Row: municipalities, Column: age-and-occupational specific net migration divided by residential population), K-means clustering analysis is applied. According to some indicator including AIC, the clustering which creates 9 groups seems to be reasonable.
The distribution of the groups is summarized as follows. The central part and its fringe, where many projects concerning urban restructuring have done, gain large population inflow of white-collar workers. The uptown and the inner suburb record significant net loss, especially grey and blue-collar populations. The outer-suburban zone located 30 to 40 kilometer from the center gains net migration of every occupational group and the inflows of grey and blue-collar workers are remarkable.
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