OBJECTIVE: Students will show competency of Losch and Hoteling’s agglomeration models using their respective local geographies.

MATERIALS: Tablets or computers to access Google My Maps; or two paper maps of your respective local regions that you wish your students to explore.

Step 1: Provide lecture notes to explain Harold Hoteling’s Locational Interdependency Model and August Losch’s Zone of Profitability models.

(Don’t pay attention to any misspelled words!…namely “carental.”)

Step 2: Hand out the paper maps to students, and or have them log in to Google My Maps on their devices. (Phones are not the best to use for this activity, as it requires dexterous fingers).

Step 3: Tell students that their goal today is to illustrate that Losch’s and Hoteling’s models are alive and well within their local communities. Every student is competing with each other to find the most agglomerated industry (they may choose) within their local region. Note: If you are in a rural area, you may need to choose a smaller scaled map and zoom out to the closest urbanized area in order to see agglomeration patterns.

Step 4: Have students choose one industry to work with for Losch and one industry to work with for Hoteling.

Industries/business types my students found success with include: Health, Beauty, Wellness, Sports, Clothing retail, Grocery, Fast Food, Sit-Down food, Automobile, Home goods/decor, jewelry, Coffee/Donuts, drive throughs.

Step 5: Have students conduct Google searches using Google My Maps (I prefer Yelp’s map and search features), to plot the locations of various businesses within their respective industries, or direct competitors (Hoteling). Note: I had students plot 20 points to get a good data set. If using Google My Maps to conduct the searches, they can simply tap on the plot point and select “+add to map,” it will also include the name of the company so that they don’t have to type it over again.

Remember that since they are looking for competitors in Hoteling’s model, they should probably not be marking down  multiple McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. They need to be unique businesses.

Step 6: Once they have 20 plot points, use the polygon/line tool to draw a polygon round their outermost points. The simply tap the screen to begin a line and double tap the last point to close it. I had my kids title it, “Hoteling: Coffee Shops.” (example).

Step 7: Once the polygon is made, they can tap on it to find the square mileage or acreage of their given industry. The competition here is to find who can get find the most agglomerated industry within their local area for both Hoteling and Losch respectively.

Step 8: Decide how you want them to turn in the assignment (I had my kids screen-shot). Hand out treat.  

Notes: I teach this course four times throughout the day and tried it four different ways. The first class did it solely on paper, the major drawback is that they can’t calculate the square mileage without some serious math skills. The next group of kids did this in teams of two on a shared Google My Maps where they both edit the same map (useful if you want them to collaborate and have someone to bounce ideas off of). Group 3 did both on Google My Maps and complained all through the hour (advanced students who prefer to be spoon fed in a lecture vs. complete assignments that require them to apply what they learned), group 4 did one on the paper map and one on Google My Maps by themselves (greatest success and time saver). See what works for you!