On-Line Glossary

Agglomeration: The association of productive activities in close proximity to one another, as in a major specialized industrial region or in a large town or city (JGS). Clustering of activities in space.

Agglomeration Economies: Savings or benefits firms realize by clustering together (S&dS). Frequently associated with the collective use of the infrastructure of transportation, communications facilities and other services (JGS).

Bid Rent: The amount of money offered to purchase a piece of land (S&dS).

Bid Rent Function : A plot (graph) of the rent which people are prepared to pay with respect to distance from some point, usually the city center (JGS).

Highest and Best Use: The notion that land is allocated the use that earns the highest location rent (S&dS).

Location Rent: The advantage of one parcel of land over another because of its location; the concept of declining rent with an increase in distance from the market (S&dS).

Perfect Competition: In free-market, capitalistic economies, markets characterized by (1) many buyers and sellers such that no individual affects price or quantities, (b) perfect information on the part of producers and consumers, (c) few, if any, barriers to market entry and (d) complete mobility of resources between alternative uses.

Rent: Payments made to land owners as a productive factor for their contribution to the productive process and the operation of the economy (S&dS). The payment to a factor over and above that necessary to keep it in its present occupation. Rent may vary from one place to another because for many reasons including its location, or distance from a market place, or its productivity.

Rent Gradient: A downward-sloping curve depicting the rate at which rent declines with distance from a central market place.

Succession and Invasion: A term adopted from ecology to describe a process of neighborhood change whereby one social group succeeds another in a residential area. Associated with the Concentric Zone Model by Burgess, the process suggests that neighborhood change is initiated by pressure on the inner city housing, usually by migrants of low socio-economic status. They move to adjacent residential areas, forcing the current residents to move out to the next zone, thus stimulating a rippling process of change outward from the city which ended with the highest status groups moving to newly built suburban homes further out (JGS).

Spatial Equilibrium: A state in which the forces making for change are in balance (JGS).

Urbanization: The process of a society changing from rural to urban and economic activities concentrating in cities (S&dS).