Describing and Modeling Rural Settlement Maps

. Hudson's location theory for rural settlement suggests the presence of second-order structure or autocovariation in maps of farmsteads at two important scales. This structure is identified. A scale-dependent statistic that measures second-order properties of map patterns is then reviewed. The expected behavior of the statistic is stated and is then estimated for a variety of different settlement maps. The statistic has the characteristic that it may be used not only to describe the second-order properties of mapped data but also to assist in specifying plausible models for the data. The empirical results, together with theory, suggest possible directions for rural settlement modeling that seem more appropriate than earlier approaches.