Travel Probability Fields and Urban Spatial Structure: 1. Theory

The proposed model attempts to explain how particular spatial distributions of trip destinations might arise as manifestations of the accessibility benefits and travel costs associated with a housing location. The trip distributions are elliptical, being expressed as bivariate normal distributions. The parameters of these distributions are shown to be related to the parameters of an assumed density function for activity sites (such as jobs and shops) and to travel speeds. The model implies a housing density function in a monocentric urban area which is negative exponential.