Alonso's General Theory of Movement: Advances in Spatial Interaction Modeling

The Spatial Interaction Model proposed by Alonso as "Theory of Movements" offers a new specification of spatial origin- destination flow models. Equations for flows between regions, total outflow from and total inflow to a region are linked by balancing factors. The paper presents a consistent formulation of Spatial Interaction Models in the Wilson tradition and Alonso's General Theory of Movement. It will be demonstrated that Alonso's model contains Wilson's Family of Spatial Interaction Models as special cases, but that the reverse is not true. The paper discusses interpretations of the model and analyzes its statistical properties. Several approaches will be discussed which aim to make the meaning of the balancing factors more explicit. The paper shows that simultaneous equation techniques are required to estimate the various relevant parameters.