INTERDEPENDENT BEHAVIOR WITH RELOCATION COSTS: THE COMPARATIVE STATICS OF SPATIAL HISTORY*

Relocation costs are a form of sunk costs because they are relevant to new entrants, not to agents at their existing locations. With sufficiently high relocation costs, initial (historically given) locations and other conditions determine the equilibrium assignment of agents to locations. Comparative static results depend on initial conditions, i.e., history matters and historical persistence can be characterized. The model suggests empirically-relevant results which can be tested by collecting data on relocation and transportation costs. For example, appropriate levels of these costs imply that suburbanization always occurs with the entry of new firms. Sequential entry strategies may be adopted by existing firms which earn pure profits. This may be contrasted with traditional NUE models which predict changes in the boundaries of central zones.     

Environmental Compliance Costs and the Distribution of Emissions in the U.S.

Using the properties of the Gini coefficient, a structural model is developed to assess the impact of uniform changes in environmental compliance costs on the distribution of per capita emissions across U.S. counties and states, a distribution that places a larger burden on minorities. Using data from the U.S. EPA's Toxic Release Inventory and three state-specific measures of environmental compliance costs, we find that uniform increases in federal environmental standards have little impact on the distribution of environmental hazards, and may actually exacerbate spatial inequality. As a result, Federal standards that target specific high pollution locations are necessary to redress current inequities.     

The Spatial Structuring of Central Places

The spatial structuring of “classical” central place systems is the primary concern of this research. Emphasizing the development of such systems from basic spatial relations between centers and hinterland locations (rather than as a result of an underlying geometry of regions), this paper takes an optimization approach to the siting of central places in a single-good system. The objective function is shown to be one that maximizes both market coverage of demand and market overlap. Access to this objective is given through the natural slack covering model.     

THE BORDER POPULATION EFFECTS OF EU INTEGRATION*

ABSTRACT Border cities or regions are in theory more affected by the EU integration process than more central locations as it more drastically influences their transaction costs and market potential. We find a positive empirical effect of EU enlargement as measured by the growth in population share along the integration borders. This effect is active for a limited distance (70 km) and time period (30 years), and is more important for large cities and regions. Despite this positive EU enlargement effect along the border, a location close to a border remains a burden in view of the (larger) negative general border effect.     

ANALYSIS OF SETTLEMENT SYSTEMS IN A MOUNTAIN REGION

In a continuing study of settlement systems using space imagery and aerial photography, systems of settlement and central places are analyzed on the basis of the intensity of transport movements between places. Central places are assigned to different categories according to the patterns of transport linkages in their tributary areas. Relationships between the maximum extent of zones of influence and the population of central places are discussed. The concept of developmental phase of a settlement system is introduced. For previous articles by the author, see S.G., Jan. 1975 and Oct. 1976. [The study area, though not identified, is in the Altay Mountains.]     

Dynamic Central Place Theory: Results of a Simulation Approach

A dynamic central place theory is formulated as a simulation model in which retail activities, described by cost equations, and consumers, described by spatial interaction equations, interact to generate a central place system. The behavior of the model is then examined. Simulation results show that the basic character of the system—whether it is agglomerated or dispersed—depends primarily on a single parameter in the interaction equation, and only secondarily on the specification of the cost function. The results are highly robust in that they are largely independent of the initial sizes and locations of centers, and even independent of the type of interaction equation used. The patterns generated appear plausible.     

POPULATION DENSITY IN A CENTRAL‐PLACE SYSTEM

The existing empirical literature about polycentric population density has focused on the urban scale, and the alternative models proposed in that context have been justified using heuristic arguments. This paper describes how polycentric density distributions can, in general, be endowed with a theoretical framework which differs from the existing literature with respect to the treatment of centers: instead of assuming that they represent places of work, it assumes they are places that provide goods and services to households. This imposes a hierarchical structure on the model, which allows replacing the set of distances to all centers (typically used in the existing literature as the same explanans irrespectively of location) with a smaller set of distances that corresponds to the number of levels in the hierarchy and varies with location. The central‐place framework used also provides a direct link between a polycentric model and the Clark formula, in the sense that the latter can emerge through a smoothing procedure of the former. Finally, in the context of central places, the scope of related empirical investigations can be extended naturally from the urban to the regional scale. This is the scale of a simple test presented here, which has been specifically included to support the corresponding theoretical arguments about the structure of a polycentric density gradient. The paper concludes with some expected problems and advantages of applying these ideas to the urban scale.     

Activity Levels at Hub Facilities in Interacting Networks

Hubs are a special type of central facility which are designed to act as switching points for intemodal flows. For instance, a set of ten interacting cities might all be connected to one of two major hubs. All flows between the cities would then be routed via the hubs. There is an obvious saving in the number of routes necessary to interconnect the cities when hubs are utilized, with a concomitant high level of activity at the facilities. This paper takes a heuristic approach to the evaluation of networks and hub locations to find locally optimal designs. It is shown that minimization of transportation costs may require assignment of nodes to a facility other than the nearest. A discount on the interhub transportation costs promotes a wider spacing of facilities. In a system with several hubs, minimization of total hub usage tends to concentrate demand very heavily into one central facility.     

Classical Central Places as Protected Thresholds

Previous research efforts demonstrate the use of location covering in the spatial structuring of central places within a single-good context. In a multilevel context, this paper similarly develops a mathematical programming approach to the siting of central places based on the “protection” of inner (or threshold) markets. The objective function maximizes both market coverage of demand and market overlap, subject to an upper bound on market overlap; this allows the formation of different market structures consistent with the various K-valued central place systems of Christaller and Lösch. Siting examples serve to illustrate the working of the protected threshold model in isotropic settings. Furthermore, ways in which the present model might be extended for other situations are examined.     

Symbolic Places of National History and Revival: A Study in Zionist Mythical Geography

Symbolic places that celebrate history and invest locations with mythical meaning provide a sense of identity in place and time; they fuse history and geography in terms of myth and memory. The retrieval and evocation of ancient history in terms of symbolic places seems to be especially significant in periods of national revival, when the invention and reinvention of tradition feature prominently in the framework of nation-building. This study examines an important aspect of the formation of the mythical geography of Zionist restoration: the retrieval and evocation of ancient Jewish history in terms of Modi'in, Massada, Beitar and Yavneh. These four places have figured prominently in the shaping of the symbolic matrix of Zionist revival. The article examines the emergence of these symbolic locations and elaborates on the cultural and political meanings assigned to them in different periods and political contexts. It further elucidates their association with particular sectors of Zionist society, and their affiliation with ideological perspectives, and focuses on particular symbolic places that have emerged in the course of Zionist restoration and the conflation of a Jewish past and a Zionist present. At the same time, this is a case study of the politics of symbolic places and their role in the shaping of the mythical geography of national revival.     

A Location-Allocation Model of Lösch's Central Place Theory: Testing on a Uniform Lattice Network

This paper develops a location-allocation model of Lösch's central place theory that maximizes the number of firms that can coexist in the market, subject to range, threshold, hierarchy, and other constraints. F.o.b. costs, economies of scale, and elastic demand are included. Consumer behavior postulates concerning the “nearest center hypothesis” and the “indifference principle” are formulated as nonlinear constraints but not used during solution. Methods are developed for simulating the continuous, infinite plain with a discrete, bounded network by use of an outer overflow network and a symmetrical market area constraint. The model is tested by applying it to a uniform lattice network and comparing the results to the expected pattern of nested hexagons. Solutions consistent with the k = 3, 4, and 7 patterns are generated by changing threshold values. However, remaining inconsistencies appear to be due to the inability to express the consumer behavior laws as linear constraints, to the bounded and discrete nature of the network, and to the objective function being the sum of integer variables. The long-run purpose of developing and validating a location-allocation model of a location theory is to use it to relax the theory's restrictive assumptions and to apply the theory to nonuniform regions.     

中心地体系中的分形和分维

中心地体系中蕴含着分形结构,具有多分维特征。本文借助koch雪花和随机Sierpinski图形揭示了中心地k=3体系和k=4体系的生成机制,提出了城乡聚落体系和城市-交通网络的两种分形模型,这些模型的分维与S.Arlinghaus的发现具有对应性。     

城市系统演化模型与模拟分析

本文详细地介绍了P. M. Allen的城市系统演化模型(EMUS),对EMUS模拟的部分结果与城市地理的一些联系也作了详细分析,如城市发展过程模拟, EMUS与Zipf法则, EMUS与中地论, EMUS中的决策效应模拟等。     

TV News Hyper-coverage and the Representation of Place: Observations on the O.J. Simpson Case

From June 1994 until October 1995, the television news industry constructed and sustained a window of saturating hyper-coverage surrounding the O.J. Simpson double-murder case. Coverage of the Simpson case provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the contemporary media practice of hyper-coverage and its possible effects on the frequency and manner in which places are reported and hence represented in television news broadcasts. Drawing from published critiques and statistics of the Simpson coverage and a preliminary content analysis of ABC World News Tonight broadcasts, this theoretical paper offers three observations: (1) the Simpson hyper-coverage altered the frequency, prominence, and metaphorical context of news about Los Angeles; (2) the Simpson hyper-coverage reduced the frequency of non-Los Angeles domestic news coverage and eclipsed the prominence of international news locations; and (3) the Simpson hyper-coverage led to the Simpsonization of domestic news (i.e. television journalists using the events in Los Angeles as a central metaphor around which to contextualize the presentation of other national news events and locations). Exploration into the Simpson media event provides insight into contemporary television journalistic conventions and how these news organization practices shape the representation of places in American popular culture.     

Secondary burial cemeteries,visibility and land tenure: A view from the southern Levant Chalcolithic period

Off-site secondary burial cemeteries in the southern Levant are an innovation of the Chalcolithic period. Ethnographic studies suggest that location of burial places was one of the means used to establish and socially mediate ownership over the landscape. The current research examines whether the spatial pattern of burial sites during the Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant represents a land tenure system. Spatial analyses of burial and habitation sites located mainly along the central Israeli coastal area indicate that Ghassulian communities avoided locating their burial sites near habitation sites concentrations. Viewshed analysis indicates that the areas observed from burial sites are significantly larger than those observed from habitation sites, and that their location scattered across an area which increases rather than overlaps the size of area visible from the habitation sites. Furthermore, our results show that communities which wanted to claim land tenure over a larger territory use burial sites locations in order to maximize the observed area within habitation sites surroundings.     

The Geographic Effects of Trade Liberalization with Increasing Returns in Transportation

Abstract This paper develops a model of economic geography that examines how the distribution of economic activity may change as a country opens up to foreign trade. The distinctive features of the model are that transportation is costly between locations within a nation as well as between nations, and that these transportation costs are subject to increasing returns to scale. A result of the model is that trade liberalization may cause the population of a country to become more concentrated in a single megalopolis. The large megalopolis may reduce welfare due to congestion costs, which implies that liberalization may unexpectedly leave the country worse off.     

Transport Costs and Rural Development

Innovations that reduce costs of transport from rural locations may also reduce transport costs to rural areas. As transport costs fall, producers can afford to concentrate and achieve economies of scale. This paper explains an initially negative, but ultimately positive, relationship between reductions in transport costs and rural development. A two-region general equilibrium model with firm and worker spatial mobility highlights the firm and household location implications of costly transport-service use by both industry and agriculture in the context of scale economies and product differentiation. The computable general equilibrium model is initialized and verified with a bi-regional social accounting matrix and then used for simulations. Changes in relative transport costs are shown to affect relative regional wage rates, thus also determining the location of "production-cost-oriented" firms.     

A transport interpretation of the growth of urban regions: an American example

In a seminal work on the evolutionary structure of wholesale trade published in 1970, Vance sharply attacked the mechanistic application of ahistorical central place concepts in efforts to explain the evolved form of urban systems in economically advanced regions. ^[1] As an endogenic model of highly localised tertiary interaction, Vance claims that central place theory is difficult to apply in old culture regions where the feudal inheritance provides some basis for cellular administrative organisation of small territories; moreover, as a paradigm for newly settled lands he sees it as historically inappropriate. ^[2] In regions such as North America, mercantilism forged powerful links between distant locations well before surrounding territory was well integrated in bureaucratic terms, and urban networks displaying central place characteristics arose only with later regional development and then only in selected areas of relative economic homogeneity. Thereafter, forces elaborating both mercantile and central place networks operated together, but central place systems always nestled within the larger-scale exogenous mercantile system.This reinterpretation of settlement history in new lands promises a fertile frame-work for understanding the complex historical layering of urban systems that still dominates their functional and locational structure. Vance's general proposition, however, needs evaluation in the light of empirical analyses of particular regions and time periods. This paper explores one aspect of transport provision (passenger service) in the American Midwest in the second half of the nineteenth century in an effort to assess the degree to which patterns of increasing spatial interaction and interdependency within the settlement system of the region can be interpreted in terms of Vance's mercantile model.     

A real options approach to amenity valuation: The role of uncertainty and risk aversion

Many empirical studies in the fields of urban and environmental economics rely on the hedonic pricing framework. This paper draws attention to two important elements that are not covered by this theory: uncertainty and relocation costs. It develops a theoretical model where agents face uncertainty, but may accumulate savings as a form of self‐insurance. It shows that uncertainty pushes up relocation costs due to the option value of waiting, while self‐insurance helps to reduce this lock‐in problem. Moreover, the model suggests that the implicit price of environmental quality increases with uncertainty even if agents are risk‐neutral.     

STABLE ISOTOPE INVESTIGATIONS OF THE DANEBURY HILLFORT PIT BURIALS

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were performed on human and animal bones recovered from pits within Danebury Iron Age hillfort. All results are within the range expected for European Holocene specimens and are similar to those from other Iron Age sites in central southern Britain. Our results indicate that the human diet included a significant amount of animal protein (meat and/or dairy products) consumed on a regular basis, but do not preclude a diet based heavily on cereal consumption. In comparison with the extensive heterogeneity visible in the animal isotope values, the homogeneity of the human values is rather striking. This may be a reflection of the much slower turnover rate of adult human collagen and may also indicate that the humans consumed a much greater variety of food than the fauna (thus averaging many isotopic sources). This is consistent with the role of hillforts as central places and locations for food distribution and exchange.