A Bid‐Price Model for ‘Non‐Western’ Cities: Revised Specification and Empirical Test

. A significant portion of the literature concerning intra‐urban residential location has involved the development of a utility maximization bid‐price model which relates income and distance to work. When distance‐overcoming costs are monetary, a positive income‐distance function is predicted, and studies in several Anglo‐American cities have provided some confirmation. If expenses are made to be temporal, the model forecasts a negative relationship because the opportunity cost of commuting is directly variable with income. A study was conducted in Piracicaba (pop. 125,000), Brazil, and neither positive nor negative income‐distance functions were encountered for any of the transportation differentiated groups. The findings indicate that the prevalence of walking, bicycling and other commuting modes which consume large amounts of time does not adequately explain the “non‐western” residential pattern (negative income‐distance to the Central Business District function) which is common in many Latin American cities. The results also suggest that hypotheses which consider spatial relationships between residences and sites other than the place of work may prove to be more fruitful (1).