ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a simple theory of locational preferfene for neighborhood services. One objective is concerned with the need to use the service and desires ready accessibility, the other is concerned with avoidance of irritation and attempts to avoid undue proximity. The result is a tradeoff, the implications of which are exhibited empirically in the form of a log-normal distribution of accessibility acceptance. This distribution may be modeled theoretically as the outcome of two independent, normally distributed response functions, one reflecting the desire for accessibility, the other the desire for insulation from irritation. If one or more of the other services were not located optimally, it is possible that this threshold would be different. An alternative approach might be to locate all but one service at minimal acceptance levels, and vary the location of the remaining one until it, too, was just acceptable. The threshold of acceptance thus obtained might well be different from that established here.
