Prediction of Residential Movement and Spatial Allocation

The spatial pattern of residential urban growth is the result of the residential development process, which is a result of a complex of decisions and actions made by a multiplicity of individuals and groups. In this paper, we focus on decisions and decision factors involved in residential movement 1 and resi-dential choice, and how these dimensions are related to models of the residential development process. The discussion is based primarily on results from a national survey of residential preferences and moving behavior of 1,476 metropolitan house-holds (see Butler et al., 1969; hereafter, references to this monograph are identified as NCHRP). Related to our discus-sion, but only briefly elaborated upon in this paper, are decisions by predevelopment landowners to sell or to hold their land and decisions by residential developers where to build housing units and locate subdivisions (Kaiser and Weiss, 1969).