Multivariate analysis of office location patterns in the city centre: A London example

Abstract

Goddard J. (1968) Multivariate analysis of office location patterns in the city centre: A London example, Reg. Studies 2, 69–85. This paper considers the problem of defining the linkages that bind firms together in close spatial cohesion in the city centre. It suggests that these linkages constitute a definable activity system and attempts to specify the present state of this system by analysing the spatial relationship between employment in eighty different types of offices in the City of London. After discussing various techniques used in other studies, an 80 × 80 correlation matrix is described and analysed within the framework of factor and cluster analysis in order to define sets of spatially linked activities. The organization of city centre space is then analysed by defining types of office areas (non-contiguous) and office regions (contiguous), using scores on the underlying factors that have been extracted, and generalized distance as the measures of similarity.