An Empirical Study of the Areal Distribution of Houses in Puerto Rico

Bibliographic Data

ID8962728
AuthorsMichael F Dacey (corresponding author)
Year1968
Issue45
Pages51-51
Publication date1968-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/621392
OpenAlexW2323003127
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited6

A FOCUS for the geography of settlement was recently identified by K. H. Stone (I965): 'The suggested core of settlement geography is the buildings-where are they and why are they there?' (p. 347). 'The focus on buildings is to provide for this part of geography a clearly definable core which is an expression of man-land relations presently inadequately studied and known' (p. 355). This study contributes to answering the 'where' question for the map distributions of houses in twenty-one rural areas of Puerto Rico. An important finding is that pertinent properties of these map distributions are adequately summarized by the negative binomial frequency function. This regularity indicates that the distributions are characterized by clusters or groups of houses and suggests the presence of a pervasive influence underlying the locations of houses. Though several models are known to generate areal distributions described by the negative binomial function, it is shown that these models are not appropriate for the rural settlement distributions in the twenty-one sample areas. Because an alternative model is not formulated, this study does not answer the 'why' question. However, empirical regularities are identified that may contribute to the formulation of an appropriate model

Distribution (mathematics · Geography · Housing Market and Economics · Land Rights and Reforms · Mathematics · Spatial and Panel Data Analysis

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