ABSTRACT
The changes in the expansion and structure of the modern city are obviously associated with a certain pattern of density and movements of population and with certain demographic traits and trends, both for the city as a whole and for its component parts. The broad characteristics of the distribution and movements of population can easily be obtained from the figures for the major census units into which every city is divided. But the results are crude, since these areas are large and usually heterogeneous. What is required is a much more detailed analysis of demographic, social and economic data on the basis of much smaller unit areas, and it is only for relatively few continental cities that such investigations have been made. Fortunately the conditions and processes of urban development are common to all cities, so that sample studies suffice to indicate their nature. We select three cities in Holland, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, since, together with the other towns of the Netherlands, they have been the subject of special investigation.
