Rational versus Heuristic Decision Making during Residential Search

The decisions of seventy household members during a residential search for a new home for owner-occupancy were measured in a search simulation game. Their decisions both to inquire about homes during the search, and to select a new home at the termination of the search, were more accurately predicted by a heuristic decision-making model than by a rational model.     

Dynamical Behavior of Cellular Automata under the Constraint of Neighborhood Coherence

The emergence of spatial discrete patterns has attracted little research interest among geographers, especially as far as the phenotypical aspects of the pattern are concerned. How can we understand the development of such patterns? What role is played by generative rules underlying this process? Using the cellular automata theory, a model (SISPAQ) was built to probe into the role of the neighborhood coherence principle (NCP) as a generative rule. Several remarkable properties of NCP are unveiled. A self-organizing behavior is shown, which allows the system to counteract the maximum entropy law and build a pattern with a relatively high level of organization. Not only does NCP provide sufficient conditions for the building up of an organized pattern, but it also provides a self-maintaining capacity. This is evidenced by the fact that under a critical value (the emancipation probability), any cell or group of cells displaying an aberrant state will be eradicated by a locally dominant state.     

HOUSING RENOVATION BY RECENT MOVERS INTO THE CORE NEIGHBOURHOODS OF SASKATOON

One hundred and eighty-five homeowning households who had moved into core neighbourhoods during 1975–80 were surveyed about their completed and planned interior and exterior home renovations. It was found that expenditures of less than $500 for cosmetic and minor repairs to the interior and exterior predominate. Discriminant analyses of subgroups of 'no' maintainer, normal maintainer, and large-scale renovator households identify financial constraints as the primary hindrance to renovating. Policy implications of the low levels of home renovation in these inner-city neighbourhoods are discussed.
Cent quatre-vingt cinq ménages propriétaries de maison ayant emmnagé dans les quartiers du centre-ville au cours de la période 1975–80 furent interrogs au sujet de leurs rénovations intérieures et extérieures, achevées et en projet. Les résultats montrent que les dépenses de moins de $500 pour réparations mineures et d'ordre esthétique prédominent. L'étude, effectuée a l'aide d'analyses discriminantes, de sous-groupes comprenant respectivement, des ménages qui ne pratiquent aucun entretien, ceux qui pratiquent un entretien normal, et ceux qui effectuent des rénovations majeures, identifie les constraintes financières comme etant l'obstacle le plus important pour la rénovation. Les implications des deux niveaux de rénovation résidentielle pour les politiques de planification urbaine sont discutées.     

The Assessment of Spatial Autocorrelation through Constrained Multiple Regression

Most published measures of spatial autocorrelation (SA) can be recast as a (normalized) cross-product statistic that indexes the degree of relationship between corresponding entries from two matrices—one specifying the spatial connections among a set of n locations, and the other reflecting a very explicit definition of similarity between the set of values on some variable x realized over the n locations. We first give a very brief sketch of the basic cross-product approach to the evaluation of SA, and then generalize this strategy to include less restrictive specifications for the notion of similarity between the values on x. Using constrained multiple regression, the characterization of variate similarity basic to any assessment of SA can itself be framed according to the information present in the measure of spatial separation. These extensions obviate the inherent arbitrariness in how SA is usually evaluated, which now results from the requirement of a very restrictive definition of variate similarity before a cross-product index can be obtained.     

Use of repeat house sales to measure changes since the early‐ or mid‐1980s in two inner‐city neighbourhoods in Windsor,Ontario

Changes in the prices of homes and the reasons for those changes may be more accurately predicted from repeat sales of the same homes after controlling for their changed attributes and differences in time between their sales and resales. This paper analyzes 346 of 583 sold houses in the Glengarry neighbourhood in Windsor, Ontario, that were sold more than once between 1981 and mid‐2017, and a corresponding 414 of 737 sold houses in the city's Wellington‐Crawford neighbourhood, sold more than once between 1986 and mid‐2017. After comparing types of resold homes with once‐sold ones, a repeat sales model predicts a first period of increasing annual percentage changes in resale prices compared to sale prices during the 1980s, followed by a second period of stagnation and possible decreases until 2011, and then increases during a third period after that. In addition, changes in resold homes’ attributes of the dwelling unit and neighbourhood are a second type of neighbourhood change in two inner‐city neighbourhoods during the past 30 or more years.