Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The view that citizens should be involved in transportation planning is now widely accepted. However, there have been few attempts to measure residents' perceptions of the effect of alternative transportation proposals on their environment. The study reported here draws up a conceptual framework for measuring firstly the perceived attributes of a residential environment, and secondly how a population evaluates such an environment under different transportation options. In each instance the conceptual framework is tested by making use of case study data. At the first stage it is demonstrated how Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and related procedures can be applied to elicit cognised environmental components of urban places. One urban place is selected and population clusters which are ‘homogeneous' in socioeconomic characteristics and activity patterns are defined. The INDSCAL model is then specified and applied to determine whether members of each population cluster evaluate the attributes of their environment in the same way under alternative transportation proposals. The measures of environmental utility for each proposal which the model produces show considerable variation within the groups. However, the model successfully defines each group's response to the effects of different transportation options.

Models for designing suburban land-use plans are evaluated with respect to the same large well-defined test problem. This evaluation—including quality of solutions obtained, cost of search, validity of representation, and generality—indicates that central-facility models are likely to be more useful than quadratic assignment models for the design of suburban land-use plans at the scale considered. These results emphasize the importance of the evaluation of models both with respect to representations and with respect to search procedures.

The primary objective of this paper is to review critically the current state of research in the field of air pollution and its effect on vegetation and to derive, through existing data and documentation, a set of integrated economic damage functions of air pollution on various kinds of vegetation, for the purpose of prediction.

Economic damage functions of vegetation were estimated via a stepwise least-squares regression method by relating economic losses of a variety of crops to air pollution and climatological variables. The crops and agricultural products selected included corn grain, soybean, cotton, root vegetables, other vegetables, nursery products, flowers, trees, field crops, and fruit and nuts.

By utilizing the ‘average’ economic damage functions derived in this study, the changes in crop losses brought about by changes in the pollution or climatological variables can be predicted.

The theory of multiregional mathematical demography investigates how fertility, mortality, and migration combine to shape the growth of multiregional population systems. Population dynamics have been studied for cases where the structural parameters, namely the age-specific rates of fertility, mortality, and migration, are fixed. This paper addresses the question of how the system behaves under changing structural parameters. By applying the technique of matrix differentiation, sensitivity functions are derived which link changes in multiregional life-table statistics and in population projections to changes in the age-specific rates. A review of the technique, which may be used for the sensitivity analysis of any matrix model, is given in the appendix.

The paper considers the development of spatial investment strategies as a response to the problems of spatial inequality of development. It extends the formal logic of growth-center-based development to show that the conditions necessary for reducing intraregional development inequalities are highly unlikely under any center-based spatial investment strategy. The strategy of growth paths is introduced as an alternative. The strategy argues that urban-tied services can be mobilized along a path, which would allow for a more equitable and possibly more efficient provision of public services. Roads positively affect the transition to development of those in proximity to them. This has always been a passive benefit of transport development. The growth-path strategy speculates that this transition can be actively encouraged.

The relationship is investigated between facility size and distance travelled to reach facilities. A model is presented of the optimum facility size in relation to size benefits and travel costs. The dynamics of change turn out to be described by the fold catastrophe. The behaviour characterised by the model is analysed in relation to various delay conventions. The implications for the conventional shopping model are explored and an alternative model is presented.

The basic uniqueness and existence properties of biproportional matrix solutions are reviewed and a direct and constructive proof of the convergence of an iterative routine commonly adopted to adjust a given nonnegative matrix to produce a second matrix (biproportional to the first), whose row and column sums are given strictly positive numbers, is offered. Existing convergence proofs, most of which are limited to particular cases of the present form, are considered.