Amenities in Quantitative Spatial Models

An indispensable feature of quantitative spatial models (QSM) are structural residuals that fit the distribution of residents across locations to the data. While they are often interpreted as amenities, do they actually represent observed amenities? We collect data on 41 amenities in the Los Angeles County, and then build a QSM to study the relationship between the structural residuals and observed amenities. We find that 45% of the variation in the residuals is explained by observed amenities. This suggests that one should be judicious when interpreting these residuals as amenities. We also find that 14 percentage points of the explained variation is accounted for by natural amenities and 31 by man-made amenities. This supports modeling amenities as endogenous.