ABSTRACT
The discussion of variation in industry structure of standard metropolitan areas in the preceding chapter prepares the way for the more intensive examination of the industry profiles of individual SMA's which takes up most of the remainder of the volume. This chapter is largely concerned with the procedures employed in this examination. It will be necessary to expound and illustrate these procedures in some detail, but the general plan of the investigation is a simple one. It consists of the following steps: (1) establish which industries make up the "industry profile" of the SMA; (2) determine what the major inputs of the profile industries are and where they come from; (3) determine what the major outputs of the profile industries are and where they go; and (4) characterize the regional relationships of the SMA in terms of the supply and market or service areas of its profile industries. The materials collected in this fashion are set forth for a selection of individual SMA's (those with 1950 populations of 300,000 to 3,000,000) in Part IV; the comparative analysis of these materials is presented in chapter 11.
