Economic Development and Public Finance Working Paper Series

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This paper explores the viability of using proportional hazard models to study spatial point patterns generated by urbanization. The analysis demonstrates that the "spatial hazard" framework is not only viable for studying urban form, but is extremely promising: the models do an excellent job of characterizing very different patterns of development, and they lend themselves directly to the kind of probative analysis needed to guide urban and regional policy. Compared to more traditional approaches to characterizing urban form — namely, density gradients — hazard models rest on a probabilistic worldview, and, so, they portray the built environment as a quantum-like froth of stochastic transitions through which urban form unfolds in an irregular fashion until it at last comes undone. Several general conclusions and directions for future research follow from these findings.