Forecasting Employment and Industrial Location in the San Francisco Bay Area

Wendt Paul F. , “Forecasting Metropolitan Growth,” Reprint No. 27, Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics (CREUE), Univ. of California, Berkeley. Reprinted from California Management Review, IV:1 (Fall 1961).

This research was supported by CREUE at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of the regional planning program of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) under Section 701, Urban Planning Assistance Program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its predecessor, the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA). We are indebted to the Center's staff and particularly to Director Paul F. Wendt for his continued encouragement and support. We also wish to thank Professor Richard U. Ratcliff whose year in residence at the Center as Visiting Professor of Business Administration resulted in profound improvements in this manuscript through his sustained reassurance and editorial assistance.

Between the time this article was submitted to the California Management Review and its publication, the BASS model was revised, and more recent forecasts are now available. These revised forecasts will appear in the BASS final report during the summer of 1968. Persons interested in the methodological changes embodied in the final revision or the more recent output may write to the authors at CREUE.

A full report on the model and its forecasts is contained in Chap. II, BASS final report, forthcoming from CREUE.

Burton R. P. Dyckman J. W. , A Quarterly Economic Forecasting Model of the State of California, monograph, Center for Planning and Development Research, forthcoming from Center for Urban and Regional Development, Univ. of California, Berkeley.

Cf. the following forecasts: Preliminary Regional Plan for the San Francisco Bay Region (Berkeley: Association of Bay Area Governments, 1966), p. 9; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-25, No. 326, “Illustrative Projections of the Population of States: 1970 to 1985” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), Table 1, Series B-1.

Theil Henri , Economic Forecasts and Policy (Amsterdam: The North Holland Company, 1961), p. 156. The reader interested in an analysis of this phenomenon should see Chapter 5, “Underestimation of Change.”

Industrial employment consists of SIC Groups No. 19–39 (Manufacturing), No. 42 (Trucking and Warehousing), and No. 50 (Wholesale Trade).

Vance James E. Jr. , Geography and Urban Evolution in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, Univ. of California, 1964), p. 64.

The economic base approach divides all regional activity into two exclusive categories, nonlocal market or “export” oriented (basic) and local market serving (service). See Isard W. , Methods of Regional Analysis (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1960), pp. 189–231.

Burton Dyckman , op. cit.

The base–service ratio is defined as service employment divided by basic employment. See Andrews R. B. , “Mechanics of the Urban Economic Base and Historical Development of the Base Concept,” Land Economics, May 1953, pp. 161–167.

Alexander John , “The Base-Nonbasic Concept of Economic Functions,” Land Economics, Feb. 1956, pp. 69–84.

The reader interested in this dependence is referred to Burton and Dyckman, op. cit.

See Goldberg M. A. , “Forecasting Employment Location in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Chap. III, BASS Final Report, forthcoming from CREUE.

Before 1848, although there were approximately 14,000 residents in what is now California, the economy was mostly pastoral and quite unrelated to that after 1848.

Vance , op. cit., p. 66.

The five counties which made up the San Francisco Bay industrial area in 1941 were Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.

Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area—Metropolis in Perspective (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959), p. 249.

Poland Orville F. , Economic Trends in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, Univ. of California, 1963), p. 13.

Vance , op. cit., p. 88.

Ibid.

Bassie V. Lewis , Economic Forecasting (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1955), p. 26.