Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Part 1 of this two-part series was concerned with the description and analysis of elements that transcend diverse urban structures of the ‘service’ type. The conclusions were general and abstract. Beyond this unified realm a more detailed description of urban form requires additional assumptions. The nature of such assumptions defines urban form within the confines of positive or normative analysis. Here the additional assumptions define spatial equilibrium within an ‘open’ city. Special cases of such equilibria have been studied extensively. In contrast part 2 develops the general case of a multicentre multiincome city. The properties of spatial-equilibrium bid-rent functions, their synthesis to a composite land-value surface, as well as the properties of this composite, are analyzed in section 1. The next section examines residential land-use patterns generated in a ‘service’ city. Such patterns turn out to be dramatically different from those of other urban types. Section 3 discusses the complex land-value and density surfaces that unfold over the landscape. Finally, section 4 provides what is probably the only analytically solved example of a spatial-equilibrium model related to a hierarchy of centres and to a continuous distribution of incomes over a continuous space.

The paper justifies an intermediate-technology approach to computer mapping, and discusses the application of SYMAP to the presentation of census data. The problems of base-map preparation, data manipulation, and the presentation of line-printer output are all discussed. An example of finished output and an operational FORTRAN program for data amalgamation are presented.

During the past two decades social scientists have come to model dynamic socioeconomic systems of growing size and complexity. Despite a heavy reliance on ever more sophisticated high-speed digital computers, however, computer capacity for handling such systems has not kept pace with the growing demands for more detailed information. Consequently, it is becoming ever more important to identify those aspects of a system which permit one to deal with parts of it independently from the rest or to treat relationships among particular subsystems as though they were independent of the relationships within those subsystems. These questions are, respectively, those of decomposition and aggregation, and their application toward ‘shrinking’ large-scale population projection models is the focus of this paper.

This brief article follows an earlier one which identified deficiencies in the descriptive power of the factorial ecology method. Attention is focused here on within-area variations through use of an Index of Qualitative Variation. Application of this index to data for Christchurch, New Zealand, along with the ‘classical’ factorial ecology approach, provides a more detailed description of the sociospatial environment than has hitherto been possible.

Network models, incorporating several new impedance measures, for the location of ambulances and hospitals are introduced. Although the minimization of average impedance is frequently stated as a criterion in location models, the impedance does not usually embrace more than a single link, such as the time taken from a facility to a demand point. Here the impedance is extended to include not only the primary link between facility and demand but also the link from the point of rescue to the point of ultimate service. The return link between the service point and dispatching station is considered as well. Models for the simultaneous location of ambulance dispatching points and hospitals are framed.

A new, highly reliable nonlinear programming algorithm is coupled with decomposition to find the optimal solution to a regional sewage-treatment system for an area in Monongalia County surrounding Morgantown, West Virginia. A regional model with trade-offs between the cost of transporting wastewater to centrally located plants for treatment and the economies of scale accruing to large centralized treatment plants is developed. Possible cost savings of an optimal system are demonstrated.

In this paper the effects of implementing environmental quality standards on the pricing of electrical energy is discussed. In a situation where the maximization of social welfare is the objective, the price, in any period, is set equal to the operating cost plus explicit and implicit environmental-quality costs plus amortization on any new generating capacity. Further, a sufficiently high combination of costs to meet environmental quality standards will result in an earlier retirement of existing capacity than would otherwise have been the case.

In a profit-maximizing situation in which profit is subject to a return-on-investment constraint, the imposition of these standards leads, via the Averch—Johnson effect, to a larger investment in new generating capacity.

The concept of a neighbourhood effect is based on a hypothesised process of contagion, by which people's attitudes and behaviour are influenced by those of others in their locality. If such an effect operates, population redistribution could be a powerful tool for the restructuring of societal attitudes. However, policies must be based on an understanding of the processes, and this requires extensive investigation of their operation. This note looks at ways of modelling and testing for these hypothesised processes in order to achieve an understanding of them.

The objective of this paper is to determine how residential solid waste has been and could be disposed of or reused in metropolitan regions. By means of optimization techniques, the authors examine the economic efficiency of landfilling, energy and materials recovery, and waste-transportation technologies at centralized and dispersed sites. The results indicate that dry-fuel technology is the most efficient system for the near future. Pyrolysis, incineration, and landfilling are less efficient systems in metropolitan regions which are running out of inexpensive landfill space. Northern New Jersey is used as a case study.