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Sector model

The Sector model, also known as the Hoyt model, is an urban land use theory developed by American economist Homer Hoyt in 1939, positing that cities grow in wedge-shaped sectors radiating outward from the central business district (CBD), with land uses such as high-rent residential areas, industry, and low-income housing arranged along major transportation corridors and axes of accessibility rather than in uniform concentric rings.^[1] This model emphasizes directional expansion influenced by socioeconomic gradients, where high-rent neighborhoods originate near the CBD and extend peripherally along favorable paths like avenues or rail lines, pulling adjacent sectors of intermediate and low rents with them, while industrial zones often occupy wedges between residential sectors.^[1] Hoyt's framework, derived from empirical analysis of rental patterns in 142 American cities, highlights how topography, historical development, and transportation infrastructure shape persistent sectoral patterns, with rents grading downward from high-rent "poles" in specific directions.^[1] Hoyt introduced the Sector model in his seminal work The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities, published by the Federal Housing Administration, as a refinement to Ernest Burgess's earlier Concentric Zone model of 1925, which assumed symmetrical, circular expansion driven solely by distance from the center.^[1] Unlike the Concentric Zone model, which predicted uniform zonation based on invasion-succession processes, Hoyt rejected the idea of concentric circles, arguing instead that "rent areas in American cities tend to conform to a pattern of sectors rather than of concentric circles," based on observed axial alignments in cities like Richmond, Virginia, where high-rent blocks concentrated along lines such as Monument Avenue and Chamberlayne Avenue.^[1] His analysis incorporated data on rent levels, population shifts, and environmental factors, revealing that high-rent areas do not "skip about at random" but follow definite paths in one or more sectors, often toward open country or waterfronts, thereby accounting for the uneven influence of railroads, highways, and prevailing winds on urban morphology.^[1] The model's assumptions include the primacy of economic accessibility in determining land values, with wealthy residents relocating outward to build new homes on peripheral vacant land, vacating inner areas for lower-income groups and perpetuating sectoral differentiation.^[1] Key features encompass a CBD at the core serving as the origin point for high-grade residential sectors, which expand linearly along transportation routes, while low-rent and industrial wedges fill interstitial spaces, creating a pie-like division of the urban landscape.^[1] Although formulated in the context of early 20th-century U.S. urbanization, the Sector model remains influential in urban planning and geography for explaining radial growth patterns in cities worldwide, particularly where infrastructure corridors dominate spatial organization, as evidenced by its application in studies of modern metropolises with persistent socioeconomic segregation along transport axes.^[2]

Overview

Definition and Purpose

The sector model, also known as the Hoyt model, is a theoretical framework in urban geography that describes the spatial organization of land uses within cities as wedge-shaped sectors radiating outward from the central business district (CBD). In this model, similar types of land uses—such as commercial, industrial, or residential—extend in linear fashion along major transportation corridors, like railroads or highways, rather than forming uniform circular patterns around the city center. This sectoral arrangement reflects how urban growth follows lines of accessibility, with land values and development intensifying along these routes.^[2] The primary purpose of the sector model is to account for the directional bias in urban expansion, emphasizing how transportation infrastructure influences the uneven distribution of land uses and economic activities. Unlike models assuming isotropic (uniform in all directions) city growth, it highlights the role of transport routes in channeling development into specific wedges, thereby shaping accessibility, land prices, and socioeconomic segregation. As a modification of the earlier concentric zone model, the sector model incorporates these transport-driven dynamics to better explain observed patterns in real cities.^[2] The sector model relates to concepts from urban morphology, which examines the physical form, structure, and evolution of urban areas, providing a basis for analyzing how sectoral patterns emerge in city layouts. Land use zoning can reinforce these observed sectoral divisions by legally and economically directing development along transportation axes. Notably, the model elucidates why high-rent residential areas typically form elongated sectors extending from the CBD, maintaining continuity due to prestige and accessibility advantages, rather than dispersing into full concentric rings.^[3]^[2]

Historical Origins

The sector model of urban land use was proposed by Homer Hoyt, a real estate economist and analyst who served as Principal Housing Economist for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).^[4] Hoyt developed the model amid the economic challenges of the Great Depression, drawing on extensive empirical data to inform FHA mortgage underwriting practices and urban policy. His work addressed the pressing need to understand residential patterns for assessing housing quality and financial risk in recovering industrial cities.^[5] In his seminal 1939 publication, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities, Hoyt analyzed rent and land value patterns across 142 U.S. cities, utilizing block-level data from real property surveys conducted between 1934 and 1936. The study focused on historical trends from 1900 to 1936, capturing urban expansion during the rail-dominated transportation era of the 1920s and 1930s, when population and industrial growth radiated outward along rail lines from city centers. This period saw rapid suburbanization in industrial hubs, driven by economic opportunities but constrained by limited transport options beyond streetcars and railroads, leading to uneven development and zoning challenges pre-World War II.^[5] Hoyt's analysis built directly on earlier observations of Chicago's growth, a key case study illustrating star-shaped expansion along radial transport routes like Milwaukee Avenue and Cottage Grove Avenue. Influenced by Ernest Burgess's 1925 concentric zone model, which Hoyt critiqued for overlooking directional transport effects, his sector approach advanced post-Depression urban theory by emphasizing axial growth patterns tied to infrastructure. This framework, grounded in FHA data from the Works Progress Administration, provided foundational insights into how economic recovery could reshape residential landscapes in American metropolises.

Theoretical Framework

Hoyt's Sector Hypothesis

The sector hypothesis, proposed by economist Homer Hoyt in 1939, posits that urban areas develop in wedge-shaped sectors radiating outward from the central business district (CBD), primarily along high-speed transportation lines such as railroads and highways, rather than in uniform concentric rings.^[6] This pattern arises because land uses remain relatively stable within each sector over time, driven by economic filtering processes where higher-income groups progressively move outward along desirable corridors, displacing lower-income residents toward the inner edges.^[6] In the context of 1930s rail systems that facilitated rapid suburban expansion, these sectors elongated due to the advantages of accessibility and prestige associated with certain routes.^[6] Sectors form by originating at the CBD and extending radially, with high-rent areas maintaining their desirability through continued proximity to employment centers and social prestige, even as the city grows.^[6] This radial extension is reinforced by compatible land uses that cluster along the same transport axes, preventing diffusion across sectors and preserving distinct socioeconomic gradients.^[6] A key dynamic in this process is the "invasion-succession" mechanism, where new, higher-status developments invade the outer fringes of an existing sector, leading to succession as older inner portions filter down to lower-income occupants, thereby sustaining the sector's continuity and elongation.^[6] For instance, luxury housing corridors along elite transport lines attract affluent residents, reinforcing the sector's high-status character while compatible uses, such as upscale retail, further entrench the pattern.^[6] Influencing factors include transportation accessibility, which directs sectoral growth along efficient routes; economic filtering, which stratifies residents by income and housing affordability; and social status preservation, where prestige tied to location perpetuates high-rent sectors.^[6] These elements interact to create persistent sectoral patterns, as observed in Hoyt's analysis of American cities.^[6] Hoyt identified five main sectors in typical cities: industry, concentrated near transport hubs; low-class housing, adjacent to industrial zones; middle-class housing, in intermediate positions; high-rent apartments, serving upper-middle groups; and elite residential areas, extending outward along premium corridors.^[6]

Key Structural Elements

The sector model posits the central business district (CBD) as the foundational core of urban structure, from which various land-use sectors radiate outward in wedge-shaped patterns influenced by transportation corridors.^[6] This core serves as the economic and commercial hub, concentrating high-value activities due to accessibility and agglomeration benefits.^[7] Typical sectors include industrial zones aligned along major transportation axes such as railroads and waterways, where manufacturing and warehousing predominate to minimize freight costs and leverage logistical efficiency.^[8] Residential sectors form distinct wedges: low-rent areas cluster near industrial zones for affordability and worker proximity; middle-rent sectors act as transitional buffers; and high-rent sectors extend along desirable routes, often featuring elevated topography or scenic amenities to attract affluent residents.^[9] These sectors maintain internal homogeneity in land use while widening progressively from the CBD, bounded by transport lines rather than forming concentric rings.^[7] On maps, the model visualizes as pie-slice divisions emanating from the CBD, with each wedge preserving its socioeconomic character along radial pathways, illustrating directional growth over uniform expansion.^[8] This layout aligns with Hoyt's sector hypothesis by emphasizing transport-driven sectoral persistence.^[6] A prominent example from Hoyt's analysis is Chicago, where high-rent residential sectors developed along the Lake Michigan shoreline to the north of the CBD, benefiting from waterfront appeal, while low-rent sectors concentrated along rail lines for industrial adjacency.^[9]

Comparisons with Other Models

Relation to Concentric Zone Model

The concentric zone model, developed by sociologist Ernest Burgess in 1925, conceptualizes urban growth as a series of concentric rings expanding outward from the central business district (CBD), where land use patterns are primarily shaped by distance from the center and associated socioeconomic gradients, with higher-status residential areas located farther out. This framework, rooted in the Chicago School of sociology, assumes isotropic expansion driven by ecological processes such as invasion, succession, and competition among social groups for prime locations. Homer Hoyt's sector model, introduced in 1939, directly builds upon and modifies Burgess's concentric zone approach by incorporating empirical data on residential rent patterns from 142 American cities, explicitly addressing limitations in the earlier model's assumption of uniform radial growth.^[1] Hoyt retained the core idea of a dominant CBD as the urban nucleus but shifted from circular rings to wedge-shaped sectors radiating along key transportation corridors, arguing that this better reflected observed directional biases in land use development. Both models share foundational similarities in their ecological perspective, positing that urban expansion occurs through competitive processes where higher-income groups displace others outward from the CBD, and both emphasize a single central core as the origin of growth influenced by accessibility and economic forces.^[1] However, the sector model critiques and improves upon the concentric zones by highlighting the model's neglect of transportation infrastructure's role in channeling development; for instance, elite residential areas often form elongated wedges rather than complete circles due to preferences for rail lines providing quick CBD access or prevailing wind directions avoiding industrial pollution. This sectoral emphasis explains uneven urban morphology, such as high-rent zones persisting along favorable transport routes in cities like Chicago, where Burgess's rings failed to account for such linear extensions.^[1]

Relation to Multiple Nuclei Model

The multiple nuclei model, proposed by Chauncy D. Harris and Edward L. Ullman in 1945, describes urban growth as occurring around several independent centers or nuclei—such as airports, universities, and suburban business districts—rather than a single central business district (CBD), reflecting the increasing complexity of land use in modern cities. This model emerged as a response to the limitations of earlier frameworks, emphasizing polycentric development where specialized activities cluster around these nodes due to compatibility, incompatibility, and agglomeration economies.^[2] In contrast to the sector model's assumption of monocentric radial growth along transportation corridors from a dominant CBD, the multiple nuclei model accommodates polycentric urban forms, which better explain the rise of automobile-dependent suburbs and dispersed economic activities in the post-World War II era.^[2] While the sector model envisions linear wedges of similar land uses extending outward, the multiple nuclei approach highlights nucleated clusters that develop independently, often bypassing traditional radial patterns.^[2] Both models incorporate the role of transportation in shaping land use and the sorting of economic activities by accessibility and socioeconomic status, yet they differ in spatial organization: sectors prioritize corridor-based expansion, whereas nuclei focus on discrete growth points.^[2] The multiple nuclei model critiques the sector model's rigidity by explicitly accounting for secondary nodes that emerge from technological and social changes, such as the proliferation of outlying retail centers in post-WWII U.S. cities like Los Angeles and Houston.^[2] This evolution underscores a shift from the sector model's suitability for pre-1940s industrial cities, where rail and streetcar lines drove wedge-like expansion, to the multiple nuclei model's explanation of 1950s and later sprawl, characterized by decentralized nuclei facilitated by highways and private vehicles.^[2]

Applications

In Urban Land Use Analysis

The sector model serves as an analytical tool in urban land use analysis to identify sectoral patterns in rent gradients and zoning, often employing geographic information systems (GIS) for spatial mapping or historical maps to trace development trajectories.^[10] Researchers apply it to overlay transportation corridors with land use data, revealing how radial sectors influence property values and functional zoning from the central business district outward.^[10] This approach facilitates quantitative assessment of rent decay along sectors, where accessibility via transport lines sustains higher values in premium residential or commercial wedges compared to peripheral areas.^[1] A specific application appears in analyses of British industrial cities, such as Manchester, where sectors align with Victorian-era rail networks that channeled industrial and residential expansion.^[11] In these contexts, the model maps how rail lines from the 19th century directed low-rent industrial sectors along transport axes, while higher-income residential sectors extended outward perpendicular to them, reflecting economic sorting tied to infrastructure.^[11] Such studies use archival rail maps to validate sectoral persistence, demonstrating how early transport investments shaped enduring land use divisions. The model demonstrates strong empirical fit in older European and U.S. cities, particularly when the sectoral framework is rotated to align with dominant transport axes rather than assuming radial symmetry from the center.^[12] This adjustment accounts for historical path dependence in pre-automobile cities, where sectors of similar land uses—such as industry or upscale housing—radiate along fixed transport routes, maintaining internal homogeneity over distance. For example, researchers have applied the model to analyze spatial-temporal land use changes in Ruaka town, Nairobi, Kenya, from 1988 to 2019, illustrating outward expansion in sectors influenced by transportation.^[10] The sector model uniquely aids in studying filtering processes within real estate markets, where it predicts neighborhood transitions as higher-income groups relocate outward along preferred sectors, vacating inner areas for successive lower-income occupants.^[13] Hoyt's framework highlights how transport-favored sectors resist filtering due to sustained accessibility, while others undergo sequential downgrading, enabling forecasts of residential succession based on sectoral position and economic pressures.^[1] This conceptual lens emphasizes economic dynamics over social invasion, providing a basis for modeling market-driven shifts in housing quality and occupancy. In 20th-century studies, the sector model was applied to validate transport's pivotal role in segregating land uses, confirming that radial corridors amplify functional specialization and socioeconomic divides in expanding urban areas.^[1] Analyses of U.S. and European cities during this period used the model to correlate rail and road investments with sectoral growth, underscoring how infrastructure dictates the spatial separation of commercial, industrial, and residential activities.^[14]

In City Planning and Development

The sector model has proven instrumental in guiding urban policy by emphasizing the development of transportation corridors to direct sectoral growth, thereby mitigating uncontrolled urban sprawl. By channeling expansion along radial routes such as highways and rail lines, planners can concentrate infrastructure investments and land uses in defined wedges emanating from the central business district (CBD), promoting efficient resource allocation and reducing fragmented peripheral development. This approach aligns with the model's core premise that accessibility via transport networks shapes socioeconomic land-use patterns, allowing cities to foster compact, linear growth rather than isotropic expansion.^[15]^[16] In real estate valuation and zoning practices, the model supports the delineation of sectors to preserve value gradients, particularly through density controls that maintain high-rent residential wedges while segregating industrial zones along lower-value corridors. For instance, zoning ordinances can limit building heights and intensities in premium sectors to sustain exclusivity and prevent encroachment from incompatible uses, thereby stabilizing property assessments based on sectoral positioning relative to the CBD and transport access. This application underscores the model's utility in policy tools that balance economic viability with spatial equity, informing decisions on permissible land uses to uphold the radial hierarchy of desirability.^[17]^[15] The sector model has informed historical urban renewal efforts and continues to provide a foundational framework for corridor-based transit-oriented development, adapting sectoral principles to enhance connectivity and mixed-use nodes along transport axes.^[16]^[17]

Criticisms and Limitations

Theoretical Weaknesses

One primary theoretical weakness of the Sector Model lies in its foundational assumptions, which overemphasize the role of rail-based transportation corridors in shaping urban land use while largely disregarding social and cultural influences. Developed in an era dominated by rail systems, the model posits that sectoral growth radiates along these fixed lines from the central business district, but this overlooks how non-economic factors such as community sentiments, ethnic enclaves, and cultural preferences can disrupt or redirect land use patterns. For instance, Walter Firey critiqued the model for insufficiently accounting for these social and cultural characteristics, arguing that they play a pivotal role in land use decisions beyond mere economic or transport-driven logic, and noted that physical features like relief and waterfront locations can further affect patterns.^[18] The model's rigidity further undermines its theoretical robustness, as it assumes sectoral boundaries and land use stability persist indefinitely, without mechanisms to address centrifugal forces like decentralization or economic shifts that could alter urban form. This static framework describes equilibrium patterns in a generic city but fails to incorporate dynamic processes, such as sector widening or boundary adjustments in response to changing market conditions or infrastructure evolution. Consequently, the model lacks an internal logic for explaining how sectors might adapt or merge over time, rendering it inflexible for conceptualizing urban growth as an ongoing, responsive phenomenon. Additionally, the model does not account for the role of urban planners or government policies, which can direct land use patterns independently of transportation or economic factors.^[2]^[19] Additionally, the Sector Model exhibits a conceptual gap by prioritizing residential land use at the expense of broader commercial or mixed-use developments, treating non-residential elements primarily as influencers on housing rather than as evolving components of urban structure. Hoyt's hypothesis, derived from an analysis of residential rent patterns in 142 cities during the 1930s, thus confines its explanatory power to housing sectors while underplaying the interplay of retail, industrial, and hybrid zones. This residential-centric focus limits the model's applicability as a comprehensive theory of urban morphology.^[20]^[21] Finally, the model's theoretical foundations are rooted in 1939 data from pre-World War II American cities, predating the emergence of suburbanization theories that would later highlight dispersed growth patterns beyond radial sectors. This temporal limitation means the hypothesis does not anticipate or integrate conceptual shifts toward polycentric or suburban-oriented urbanism, leaving a gap in its ability to address evolving theoretical paradigms in land use.^[22]

Empirical and Modern Shortcomings

Empirical analyses of early 20th-century urban development have revealed mismatches between the sector model's predictions and actual land use patterns. In Calgary during the 1930s, numerous near-slums emerged outside the central city but adjacent to the endpoints of streetcar lines, rather than extending continuously along radial transportation corridors as the model anticipates; these areas have since transitioned to middle-class residential zones, highlighting deviations from expected sectoral persistence.^[23] The model also underemphasizes physical constraints like topography in some critiques, alongside leapfrog development, where growth skips over undeveloped land, disrupting the continuous wedge-shaped progression.^[24] In contemporary contexts, the sector model demonstrates limited relevance amid polycentric urban forms that emerged post-1980s, where multiple employment and commercial nodes develop disconnected from a single central business district. The model's foundational assumptions, rooted in 1939 observations of rail-dominated transport, fail to address post-World War II shifts like widespread private vehicle ownership, which enabled dispersed suburbanization and commuting patterns unbound by fixed corridors.^[25] Recent trends, including remote work accelerated by digital technologies, further erode its utility by reducing dependence on centralized employment sectors and promoting flexible land use distributions.^[10] Overall, the absence of revisions since the mid-20th century leaves it ill-equipped for sustainability-oriented planning, such as integrating green corridors or mitigating sprawl's environmental impacts.^[10]

References

[1]
IN AMERICAN CI
"The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities." ... Homer Hoyt with the assistance of other members of this Division, should be ...
[2]
[PDF] CHANGING CITIES: Three Models of Urban Growth (Land Use)
Sector Model: Soon after Burgess generalized about the concentric zone form of the city,. Homer Hoyt re-cast the concentric ring model. While recognizing the ...
[3]
[PDF] Understanding the Spatial Characteristics of Urban Morphology and ...
1.2 Definition of Urban Morphology. Urban morphology refers to the physical form, structure, and layout of an urban area, describing the trend and ...
[4]
[PDF] Homer Hoyt: An Introduction First Edition: January 29, 2019 Overview
Hoyt's research laid the groundwork for the substantial body of work on land prices and real estate cycles today, e.g. by McMillen. (1996), Davis and Heathcote ...
[5]
Correlates of Urban Residential Structure on JSTOR
1939 The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. ... Basing his conclusion on analysis of 142 U.S. cities, Hoyt argues that those
[6]
The structure and growth of residential neighborhoods in American ...
Mar 28, 2007 · The structure and growth of residential neighborhoods in American cities ... Homer Hoyt with the assistance of other members of the ...
[7]
Chapter 7 - The Spatial Structure of Urban Areas - D-Scholarship@Pitt
The sector theory is associated historically with Homer Hoyt and has been stated as follows: "growth along a particular axis of transportation usually ...
[8]
[PDF] Zonal and Sector Theories of Internal Urban Structure Applied to Tulsa
Hoyt's sector model assumes a shape much like that of a pie from which pieces are cut at random. Each of the types of land use is orientated to an important ...
[9]
Urban land use patterns and models - GeographyCaseStudy.Com
May 11, 2018 · Hoyt's Sector Model. In 1939 Homer Hoyt published “The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities” in which he ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[10]
Urban models: Progress and perspective - ScienceDirect.com
In 1939, Hoyt proposed the Hoyt sector model, which argues that the highest-income residential areas occur in city centres and expanding outward in wedge ...
[11]
(PDF) A Critical Analysis of the Standard Urban Model in the Context ...
... Urban Environment Diversities. Also, in contrast to the Hoyt Model, the SUM simplistically views urban landscapes as uniform,. without considering the impact ...
[12]
Urban Spatial Structure -Theory and Phenomenon - Academia.edu
When did the Sector Model become a prevalent framework for urban growth analysis? ... Mönchengladbach in the west and Dortmund in the north east. Besides ...
[13]
The Rise of Filtering Down: The American Housing Market ... - jstor
The fact was acknowledged by Homer Hoyt (1939: 120) in an influential study of neigh borhood change in American cities. Noting that filtering might help lower.
[14]
Hoyt, H. 1939: The structure and growth of residential ...
1939: The structure and growth of residential neighborhoods in American cities. ... HOMER HOYT. Washington: Homer Hoyt Associates. 1968 (reprint of edition ...
[15]
[PDF] Chapter 5 - DSpace@MIT
Here's a famous alternative model: The. Hoyt Sector Model of Urban Form… Prevailing. Winds. CBD. UPPER. INCOME. MIDDLE. INCOME. LIGHT.
[16]
12.5 Internal City Structure – Introduction to Cultural Geography
Source: “Hoyt model” by Cieran 91 via Wikimedia Commons is in the public domain. A simplified version of the Sector Model is shown in Figure 12.5.6. This model ...
[17]
Sector Theory by Homer Hoyt: A Revolutionary Perspective in ...
Homer Hoyt's Sector Theory stands as a pioneering conceptual framework that has profoundly influenced the understanding of city development.
[18]
9. Theories of Urban Morphology
Hoyt stated that the sector theory is of fundamental importance in analysing neighbourhoods especially in the American cities for locating markets for retail ...
[19]
None
### Summary of Limitations, Weaknesses, Criticisms, or Theoretical Flaws of Hoyt's Sector Model
[20]
[PDF] Topic: Sector Theory by Hoyt
In Hoyt's model entire city is considered as a circle and different land use / functional zone originate near the centre of the circle and migrate towards the ...
[21]
[PDF] Hoyt Model or Sector Model (1939) of Urban Land Use by Homer Hoyt
Hoyt argued that cities do not develop in the form of simple rings, instead, they have "sectors." Homer Hoyt in 1939 suggested that few activities grow in the ...Missing: critique s
[22]
[PDF] Models of - Burgess Homer Hoyt Harris & Ullman
the process of INVASION and SUCCESSION. The greatest change of use is concentrated in this inner zone which is, therefore, in transition. Why this zone is in ...
[23]
3 Definitions and theories - Living Reviews in Landscape Research
... leapfrog development (Carrión-Flores and Irwin, 2004; Irwin and Bockstael ... sector model theory of Hoyt (1939), concluding with the multiple nuclei ...
[24]
[PDF] Chapter 5 - Urban geography - Esri
edge cities ... that found in the Hoyt sector model. Beyond the CBD and elite sector, however, the model quickly diverges from models based on US cities.
[25]
A New Hypothesis on Informal Land Supply, Livelihood, and Urban ...
Hoyt [16] proposed the sector model, arguing that cities do not develop in concentric circles but rather in different sectors surrounding the central ...
[26]
Hoyt Sector Model: AP® Human Geography Crash Course | Albert.io
Mar 1, 2022 · The Hoyt Sector Model has at its core the central business district (CBD). Every older city has one such district at its center.