The purpose of this paper is to present a method of classifying the cities, to find out the social characteristics of Hokkaido cities by using the factor analysis method, and to classify the cities in accordance with the characteristics found.
In this study, twenty-eight variables were selected as the indices of social characteristics of thirty-three cities in Hokkaido, and, as the result, seven factors, of which each eigen-value is of more than 1.0, are extracted. These seven factors account for 82.7% of the total variations.
Among these seven, we find three main factors as follows.
(1) The primary factor- “productivity index”
Factor 1, the most important one, amounts to a condiserable proportion of 31.5% of the total variations. It is composed of the indices of population density, industrial sales, municipal pavement rate. This factor shows productivity and reflects the relative weight and stability of production.
Table 8 types of cities classified by three main factors.
(2) The secondary factor- “management and consumption index”
Among the total variations, 14.4% is explained by the secondary factor.
The high structure values of the composite variables are the business establishments and the department store sales, of which the factor loarding is more than 0.8.
(3) The third factor- “habitability index”
The third factor indicates 12.9% of the total variations. Among the indices of the factor, the superior one is the population per automobile, and the next is the municipal residence rate. These factor loardings exceed 0.8, whereas the negative index is the annual revenue per person.
Based on the score of these three main factors, following 8 patterns of the cities were classified (see Table).
Type A : (Three indices are advanced with balance.)
Type B : (The “habitability index” is relatively retreat.)
Type C : (The “productivity index is relatively” advanced.)
Type D : (The “management and consumption index” is retreat.)
Type E : (The “management and consumption index” is advanced.)
Type F : (The “productivity index” is retreat.)
Type G : (The “habitability index” is advanced.)
Type H : (Three indices are retreat without balance.)
Hokkaido is an island society of 22.1% of whole Japan and is composed of just one local government. Therefore, the whole social structure of Hokkaido is unique in comparison with other islands of Japan; Mainland, Shikoku and Kyushu. And then, the application of this method of classifying the cities in Hokkaido is more significant than in other islands.
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