Urban Acquaintance Fields: An Evaluation of a Spatial Model

The present paper is concerned with examination of the spatial characteristics of empirical data relating to contact fields for a sample of residents in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is shown that a model of individual urban contact fields described in an earlier paper (Moore, 1970) provides interesting insights into the spatial characteristics of the empirical contact fields. The model is briefly presented, its aggregate form is derived, and the data are then examined with reference to the aggregate-level model. Analysis of person-to-person contacts may be regarded as the first step towards identification of spatial regularities in information flows(1). Most studies of contact fields have been quite restrictive in their spatial representation, having adopted distance-decay functions as the prime means of description (Hägerstrand, 1957; Marble and Nystuen, 1963; Morrill and Pitts, 1967; Marble and Bowlby, 1968). If the distribution of opportunities for contact is neither uniform nor possesses a symmetrical decline in frequency with increasing distance from the respondent, fitting distance-decay functions to observed contacts tends to hide interesting spatial properties of contact fields. This paper is concerned, therefore, with examining the validity and implications of the aggregated form of a model of individual urban contact fields in an empirical situation.