Interaction between Development Intensity: An Evaluation of Alternative Spatial Weight Matrices

Abstract

This paper investigates the spatial dependency of job and worker densities for the Minneapolis–St. Paul (Twin Cities) metropolitan area using census block level data from 2002 to 2017. A spatial weight matrix is proposed, considering the statistical expression of data, referred to as the correlation matrix, which detects the variations of dependencies among spatial units in both direction and level. The superior performance of the correlation matrix is demonstrated through a series of spatial regression models to predict land use patterns, in comparison with the conventionally used adjacency matrix as well as the accessibility matrix.