New Entropy Models in the Social Sciences. 1. Elementary Residential-Location Models

This paper is concerned with the development of new entropy models for use in the social sciences and, in particular, with residential location in a spatial-interaction context. The inconsistencies and limitations inherent in some of the existing spatial-interaction entropy models used to describe activities taking place in urban and regional systems are first discussed, and new location models that have none of these inconsistencies are then developed. The new models describe the location of households about a city centre and, more generally, about a given distribution of jobs. The models take due account, in a consistent fashion, of any zonal-capacity constraints. The use of the models is illustrated with suitable data.