Refer to Notes on

Urban Land Use Models

The relationships between transportation and land use are rich in theoretical representations that
have contributed much to geographical sciences. Several descriptive and analytical models of
urban land use have been developed over time, with increased levels of complexity. All involve
some consideration of transport in the explanations of urban land use structures:
Von Thunen's Regional Land Use Model
Von Thunens regional land use model is the oldest. It was initially developed in the early 19th
century (1826) for the analysis of agricultural land use patterns in Germany. It used the concept
of economic rent to explain a spatial organization where different agricultural activities are
competing for the usage of land. The underlying principles of this model have been the
foundation of many others where economic considerations, namely land rent and distance-
decay, are incorporated. The core assumption of the model is that agricultural land use is
patterned in the form of concentric circles around a market. Many concordances of this model
with reality have been found, notably in North America.
If modern economics began with Adam Smith, modern location economics began with Von
Thunen (1826). He was the first to develop a basic analytical model of the relationships between
markets, production, and distance. For this purpose he looked upon the agricultural landscape.
The relative costs of transporting different agricultural commodities to the central market
determined the agricultural land use around a city. The most productive activities will thus
compete for the closest land to the market and activities not productive enough will locate further
away. The model has a set of basic assumptions which reflects agricultural condit ions around a
city in the early 19th century:

Isolation. There is one isolated market in an isolated state having no interactions (trade)
with the outside.
Ubiquitous land characteristics. The land surrounding the market is entirely flat and its
fertility uniform.
Transportation. It is assumed there are no transport infrastructures such as roads or
rivers and that farmers are transporting their production to the market using horses and
carts. Transportation costs are dependent of the type of commodity being transported to
the market as well as the distance involved.
The model compares the relationships between production cost, the market price and the
transport cost of an agricultural commodity and is expressed as follows:
R = Y(p-c) - Yfm
R = Rent per unit of land.
Y = Yield per unit of land.
p = market price per unit of yield.
c = Average production costs per unit of yield.
m = Distance from market (in kilometers or miles).
f = Freight rate per unit of yield and unit of distance.
All agricultural land uses are maximizing their productivity (rent), which in this case is
dependent upon their location from the market (Central City). The role of farmer is to maximize
his profit which is simply the market price minus the transport and production costs. The most
productive activities (gardening or milk production) or activities having high transport costs
(firewood) locate nearby the market. The above figure provides an overview of Von Thunen's
agricultural land use model with the basic assumptions being applied (isolation, ubiquity,
transportation). It can be divided in two parts:
The pure isolated state over an isotropic plain (left). In this case, the model takes a shape
of perfect concentric circles.
The potential impacts of modified transport costs (a navigable river) and the presence
of a competing center (right).
The relationships between agricultural land use and market distance are very difficult to establish
in the contemporary context. However, a strong relationship between the transport system and
regional agricultural land use patterns can be acknowledged at the continental level in North
America.

The Burgess concentric model
was among the first attempts to investigate spatial patterns at the urban level (1925). Although
the purpose of the model was to analyze social classes, it recognized that transportation and
mobility were important factors behind the spatial organization of urban areas. The formal land
use representation of this model is derived from commuting distance from the CBD, creating
concentric circles. Each circle represents a specific socioeconomic urban landscape. This model
is conceptually a direct adaptation of the Von Thunen's model to urban land use since it deals
with a concentric representation.


In 1925, Burgess presented a descriptive urban land use model, which divided cities in a set of
concentric circles expanding from the downtown to the suburbs. This representation was built
from Burgess' observations of a number of American cities, notably Chicago, for which he
provided empirical evidence. The model assumes a relationship between the socio-economic
status (mainly income) of households and the distance from the CBD. The further from the CBD,
the better the quality of housing, but the longer the commuting time. Thus, accessing better
housing is done at the expense of longer commuting times (and costs). According to this
monocentric model (see above figure), a large city is divided in six concentric zones:
Zone I: Central Business District (CBD) where most of the tertiary employment is
located and where the urban transport infrastructure is converging, making this zone the
most accessible.
Zone II: Immediately adjacent to the CBD a zone where many industrial activities locate
to take advantage of nearby labor and markets. Further, most transport terminals, namely
port sites and railyards, are located adjacent to the central area.
Zone III: This zone is gradually been reconverted to other uses by expanding
manufacturing / industrial activities. It contains the poorest segment of the urban
population, notably first generation immigrants living, in the lowest housing conditions.
Zone IV: Residential zone dominated by the working class and those who were able to
move away from the previous zone (often second generation immigrants). This zone has
the advantage of being located near the major zones of employment (I and II) and thus
represents a low cost location for the working class.
Zone V: Represents higher quality housing linked with longer commuting costs.
Zone VI: Mainly high class and expensive housing in a rural, suburbanized, setting. The
commuting costs are the highest. Prior to mass diffusion of the automobile (1930s), most
of these settlements were located next to rail stations.
According to Burgess, urban growth is a process of expansion and reconversion of land uses,
with a tendency of each inner zone to expand in the outer zone. On the above figure, zone II
(Factory zone) is expanding towards zone IV (Working class zone), creating a transition zone
with reconversion of land use. Although the Burgess model is simple and elegant, it has drawn
numerous criticisms:
The model is too simple and limited in historical and cultural applications up to the
1950s. It is a product of its time.
The model was developed when American cities were growing very fast in demographic
terms and when motorized transportation was still uncommon as most people used public
transit. Expansion thus involved reconversion of existing land uses. This concept cannot
be applied in a contemporary (from the second half to the 20th century) context where
highways have enabled urban development to escape the reconversion process and to take
place directly in the suburbs.
The model was developed for American cities and has limited applicability elsewhere. It
has been demonstrated that pre-industrial cities, notably in Europe, did not at all followed
the concentric circles model. For instance, in most pre-industrial European cities, the
center was much more important than the periphery, notably in terms of social status. The
Burgess concentric model is consequently partially inverted.
There were a lot of spatial differences in terms of ethnic, social and occupational status,
while there were low occurrence of the functional differences in land use patterns. The
concentric model assumed a spatial separation of place of work and place of residence,
which was not generalized until the twentieth century.
However, the Burgess model remains useful as a concept explaining concentric urban
development, as a way to introduce the complexity of urban land use and to explain urban
growth in American cities in the early-mid 20th century.
Sector and multiple nuclei land use models
were developed to take into account numerous factors overlooked by concentric models, namely
the influence of transport axis (Hoyt, 1939) and multiple nuclei (Harris and Ullman, 1945) on
land use and growth. Both representations consider the emerging impacts of motorization on the
urban spatial structure.
A
study of residential areas done by Hoyt (1939) in the North American context concluded that the
land use pattern was not a random distribution, nor sharply defined rectangular areas or
concentric circles, but rather sectors. Thus, the effect of direction and time was added to the
effect of distance. Transport corridors, such as rail lines and major roads, are mainly responsible
for the creation of sectors, thus transport has directional effect on land uses. Cities would thus
grow along major axis. The sector representation also includes concentric transitional processes
observed by Burgess, which is occurring along a specific direction.
Following Hoyt's development of a sectorial city, Harris and Ullman (1945) introduced a more
effective generalization of urban land uses. It was brought forward that many towns and nearly
all large cities do not grow around one CBD, but are formed by the progressive integration of a
number of separate nuclei in the urban pattern. These nodes become specialized and
differentiated in the growth process and are not located in relation to any distance attribute, but
are bound by a number of attributes:
Differential accessibility. Some activities require specialized facilities such as port and
rail terminals. For instance, the retailing sector demands maximum accessibility, which is
often different from centrality offered in the CBD.
Land use compatibility. Similar activities group together since proximity implies
improved interactions through the process of economies of agglomeration. Service
activities such as banks, insurance companies, shops and institutions are strongly
interacting with each other. This can be defined as centripetal forces between activities.
Land use incompatibility. Some activities are repelling each-other such as high quality
residential and heavy industrial. This may be defined as centrifugal forces. This is one of
the main reasons why poorer neighborhoods tend to be located on the eastern side, at
least in industrial cities. Since in the northern hemisphere, prevailing winds tend to be
westerlies, so eastern sections of an industrial city tended to have a higher level of
exposure to industrial air pollution.
Location suitability. Some activities cannot afford the rent of the optimal site for their
location. They are thus locating at cheaper places, which are not optimal, but suitable for
these activities.
Harris and Ullman poly-nuclear model was the first to represent the fragmentation of urban
areas, specialized functions as well as suburbanization.


Hybrid models
tried to include the concentric, sector and nuclei behavior of different processes in explaining
urban land use. They are an attempt to integrate the strengths of each approach since none of
these appear to provide a completely satisfactory explanation. Thus, hybrid models, such as that
developed by Isard (1955), consider the concentric effect of nodes (CBDs and sub-centers) and
the radial effect of transport axis, all overlain to form a land use pattern. Also, hybrid
representations are suitable to explain the evolution of the urban spatial structure as they
combine different spatial impacts of transportation on urban land use, let them be concentric or
radial, and this at different points in time.

Since both the concentric, sectorial and zonal models had problems dealing with specific
conditions, hybrid representations of urban land uses were developed. They try to include the
strengths of each representation. One of the first to do so was W. Isard (1955). This model
illustrates that some urban land uses are oriented along major transport axis (sectors), while
others, notably industrial and commercial, are located in nuclei where they reach both scale and
agglomeration economies. The urban land use is thus an overlay of different transport effects, let
them be sectorial, zonal or nuclear.

Land rent theory
was also developed to explain land use as a market where different urban activities are
competing for land usage at a location. It is strongly based in the market principle of spatial
competition. The more desirable the location, the higher its rent value. Transportation, through
accessibility and distance-decay, is a strong explanatory factor on the land rent and its impacts on
land use. However, conventional representations of land rent are being challenged by structural
modifications of contemporary cities.

In a market economy, most of the urban land can be freely sold or purchased. Thus land
economics are concerned about how the price of urban land is established and how this price
will influence the nature, pattern and distribution of land uses. The above figure provides some
basic relationships between the quantity of land and its price and assumes that there is a free
land market. This market mechanism follows the standard relationship between supply and
demand, where an equilibrium price is reached. A quantity of land Q1 would be available at a
price of P1. However, what is particular to cities is that the supply is fixed since there is a limited
amount of available land.
When land is reasonably available (Q1), the price (P1) will be moderate.
Moving towards the downtown the demand rises, land becomes scarcer (Q2) and its price
goes up (P2).
Moving towards the periphery, more land is available, demand drops (Q3), and so does
the price (P3).
Not every type of activities is willing to pay a price P1. Some may even need a price lower than
P3. High land values impose a more intensive usage of space so a higher number of activities
can benefit from a central location. The logic behind the construction of skyscrapers is therefore
obvious and takes place at optimal locations of competition for land. Different type of activities,
each having their own land use, are willing to pay different rents.