Residential Location Decisions, Newcastle, N.S.W
Abstract
Residential Location Decisions, Newcastle, N.S.W SAGE Publications, Inc.1968DOI: 10.1177/144078336800400103 M.T.Daly ONE of the most widely accepted explanations of urban land use distributions is the economic rent model, which poses an equilibrium solution based on the economic man assumptions of perfect knowledge, complete rationality, and maximization of utility. According to the theory, greatest utility is derived from the occupation of the most accessible site, which earns the highest economic rent. Competition between land uses produces a zonation of uses with effective distance from the city centre. Commerce and industry usually occupy the most desirable sites in this scheme, with residential land use occupying the remaining areas. However, the economic rent theory, while usefully explaining broad intra-city land-use zones, has not provided a satisfactory tool for the predictive and analytical consideration of changes within such zones.1 This is especially true of residential land use; the "preposterously omniscient rationality"2 of the economic man assumptions, underlying rent theory, negate vital forces in the homemaking decision. The present paper concentrates on residential decision-making in Newcastle, N.S.W.3 It begins with the simplest enunciation of the model and relaxes its assumptions to examine how environmental values and site amenities affect the location decision; and, secondly,