# William Alonso

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**William Alonso** (January 29, 1933 – February 11, 1999)[1] was an [Argentine](/source/Argentina)-[American](/source/United_States) planner and [economist](/source/Economist).

He was born in Buenos Aires but moved to the United States in 1946 during the [Perón regime](/source/Juan_Per%C3%B3n) with his father [Amado Alonso](/source/Amado_Alonso), a leading Spanish philologist, who was then appointed at Harvard. He earned a bachelor's degree in architectural science from Harvard in 1954 and a master's degree in city planning from Harvard University's [Graduate School of Public Administration](/source/Harvard_Kennedy_School) in 1956. In 1960 he received a doctorate in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania.

From 1960 to 1961 Alonso worked as director and professor in the Department of Regional and Urban Planning at the [Bandung Institute of Technology](/source/Bandung_Institute_of_Technology) in [Indonesia](/source/Indonesia). He then served as a visiting professor at the [Universidad Central de Venezuela](/source/Universidad_Central_de_Venezuela) in 1962 before coming to Harvard as the acting director of the Center of Urban Studies from 1963 to 1965. Alonso also worked at [Yale University](/source/Yale_University), the [University of California](/source/University_of_California) at [Berkeley](/source/University_of_California,_Berkeley), and [Stanford University](/source/Stanford_University).

In 1976 Alonso became Director of the [Center for Population Studies](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cpds) of [Harvard University](/source/Harvard_University). Two years later he became the Richard Saltonstall professor of population policy in the Faculty of Public Health and a member of the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

His research was focused on [demographic](/source/Demographics) changes, in particular in very urbanized areas. He developed a mathematical model connecting [migration](/source/Human_migration) and the evolution of the distribution of [population](/source/Population_(human_biology)).

In 1964, he published *Location and Land Use*, in which he defined a modeled approach to the formation of land rent in urban environments. His model became one of the pillars of [urban economics](/source/Urban_economics).[2]

## See also

- [Bid rent theory](/source/Bid_rent_theory)

## References

1. Lambiri, Diona (2005). ["Alonso, William"](https://books.google.com/books?id=R0xi4LPScjYC&pg=PA16). *Encyclopedia Of The City*. Taylor & Francis. p. 16. ISBN 0415252253.

1. William Alonso (1969) *Location and Land Use: Towards a General Theory of Land Rent* ISBN 978-0674729568

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