No abstract

Advances in the Theory of Market AreasThe purpose of the paper is to state general properties of theoretical market areas of cities. W e consider two centers on the Euclidean plane, several models describing the spatial influence of a center, and a general, continuous, and strictly increasing transportation cost function. Derived properties of market areas concern area measure, topological bounds, emptiness, boundedness, connectedness, convexity, and the membership of a city to its own market area. In particular, it is shown how the shape of market areas changes with the transportation cost function. Finally, prospects for further research are presented.Tlie authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous referees for their stiinulatiiig coininents.

In this paper an application of location-allocation modelling to an emergency service is presented. This study differs in two aspects from earlier work because it covers two neglected fields: (1) it is concerned with a rural environment whereas most case studies are about urban areas; (2) it is a comparison of the performance of several models instead of using only one. Efficiency as well as equity are taken into account. The main conclusions are about the issues of the choice of an appropriate model from 3 candidate models, the stability of the solutions with respect to variations in the number of facilities, the quasi-nested structure of some solutions, and the high cost of introducing equity.

No abstract

Geography is the science of places not of men. P. V i a de la BlocheGeographical space is a major concept in spatial analysis. Curiuusly enough, 1u) attempt har so far been made to provide a general and rigorous presmtation. In this paper, a f m l definition of the basic geographical compone?zts is given. For that purpose, topology and measure theory are used. A general definition of geographical space is then proposed and some properties are examined. Finally, the relations between the proposed definition and the particular representations used in spatial analysis are discussed.