Nonparametric employment subcenter identification

A two-stage procedure is proposed for identifying urban employment subcente rs. The first stage identifies candidate subcenters as significant positive residuals in a smoothed employment density function. Subcenters are those sites that provide significant explanatory power in the second-stage, semip arametric employment density function estimation. The procedure can be appl ied to either aggregated or disaggregated data, does not require detailed k nowledge of the study area, and is easily reproducible by other researchers , Results are presented for five previously studied cities-Chicago, Dallas. Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco-and a new one, New Orleans. (C) 20 01 Academic Press.