The Location of the Household

Abstract

The analysis of the locational choice of the household in this chapter is presented in two ways. In the first part of the chapter we present a diagrammatic account based on the assumption that the consumer attempts to minimise his total location costs, where these are defined as his rent costs plus the direct and indirect costs of travel. This approach has the advantage that it is non-mathematical. Its disadvantage is that, to use it, we have to assume that the householder has only his residential location to decide and that he has already made all his other consumption decisions; in particular, he is assumed to know the amount of housing space he intends to occupy and his valuation of his travelling time.