Land-use Forecasting - Lowry Model

Lowry Model

Hard on the heels of the CATS work, several agencies and investigators began to explore analytic forecasting techniques, and between 1956 and the early 1960s a number of modeling techniques evolved. Irwin (1965) provides a review of the status of emerging models. One of the models, the Lowry model, was widely adopted.

Supported at first by local organizations and later by a Ford Foundation grant to the RAND Corporation, Ira S. Lowry undertook a three-year study in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. (Work at RAND will be discussed later.) The environment was data rich, and there were good professional relationships available in the emerging emphasis on location and regional economies in the Economics Department at the University of Pittsburgh under the leadership of Edgar M. Hoover. The structure of the Lowry model is shown on the flow chart.

The flow chart gives the logic of the Lowry model. It is demand driven. First, the model responds to an increase in basic employment. It then responds to the consequent impacts on service activities. As Lowry treated his model and as the flow chart indicates, the model is solved by iteration. But the structure of the model is such that iteration is not necessary.

Although the language giving justification for the model specification is an economic language and Lowry is an economist, the model is not an economic model. Prices, markets, and the like do not enter.

A review of Lowry’s publication will suggest reasons why his approach has been widely adopted. The publication was the first full elaboration of a model, data analysis and handling problems, and computations. Lowry’s writing is excellent. He is candid and discusses his reasoning in a clear fashion. One can imagine an analyst elsewhere reading Lowry and thinking, “Yes, I can do that.”

The diffusion of innovations of the model is interesting. Lowry was not involved in consulting, and his word of mouth contacts with transportation professionals were quite limited. His interest was and is in housing economics. Lowry did little or no “selling.” We learn that people will pay attention to good writing and an idea whose time has come.

The model makes extensive use of gravity or interaction decaying with distance functions. Use of “gravity model” ideas was common at the time Lowry developed his model; indeed, the idea of the gravity model was at least 100 years old at the time. It was under much refinement at the time of Lowry’s work; persons such as Alan Voorhees, Mort Schneider, John Hamburg, Roger Creighon, and Walter Hansen made important contributions. (See Carrothers 1956).

The Lowry model provided a point of departure for work in a number of places. Goldner (1971) traces its impact and modifications made. Steven Putnam at the University of Pennsylvania used it to develop PLUM (projective land use model) and I(incremental)PLUM. We estimate that Lowry derivatives are used in most MPO studies, but most of today’s workers do not recognize the Lowry heritage, the derivatives are one or two steps away from the mother logic.