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This paper proposes a method to recover an unknown probability distribution given a censored or truncated sample from that distribution. The proposed method is a novel and conceptually simple detruncation method based on sampling the observed data according to weights learned by solving a simulation-based optimization problem; this method is especially appropriate in cases where little analytic information is available but the truncation process can be simulated. The proposed method is compared with the ubiquitous maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method in a variety of synthetic validation experiments, where it is found that the proposed method performs slightly worse than perfectly specified MLE and competitively with slightly misspecified MLE. The practical application of this method is then demonstrated via a pair of case studies in which the proposed detruncation method is used alongside a car-sharing service simulator to estimate demand for round-trip car-sharing services in the Boston and New York metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built forms of New York City and Boston differed dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper focuses on the changing forms of their retail districts and evaluates the divergence in those patterns in relation to their socioeconomic context. Historical atlases and city directories identified the locations of department stores, which were used as indicators of the retail districts while primary and secondary historical sources related locational decisions to their economic position and the structure of their elite classes. New York's unstable elite classes continued to move their residences north on Manhattan Island throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and were unable and unwilling to stop the northward expansion of the retail district. Boston's stable ruling class was able to control retail expansion through various political acts limiting development and through social barriers that limited displays of conspicuous consumption. The importance of the structure of elite classes in mediating the processes of land allocation suggests that findings of New York, as a city of competitive capitalism with a splintered elite, and Boston, as a city of controlled capitalism with a ruling elite, might provide a useful framework for understanding the specific contexts within other urban built forms.