Gravity Model of Migration
The gravity model of migration explains the volume of movement between two places as proportional to the product of their populations (masses) and inversely proportional to the distance separating them, by direct analogy to Newton's law of universal gravitation. Formalized for intercity movement by George Kingsley Zipf in 1946 and embedded in regional science by Walter Isard, it is the workhorse model of human geography for predicting migration, commuting, and other spatial-interaction flows.
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Sources
- Zipf, G. K. (1946). The P1 P2 / D hypothesis: On the intercity movement of persons. American Sociological Review, 11(6), 677–686. DOI: 10.2307/2087063 ↗
- Isard, W. (1960). Methods of Regional Analysis: An Introduction to Regional Science. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262090032
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Gravity Model of Migration and Spatial Interaction. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/human-geography/gravity-model-of-migration
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