How do economic processes affect urban land use?

Where there is a free market for land, whoever offers the most money will usually end up acquiring the land. Central locations always attract the highest bids from the most wealthy bidders in the market, as it's the best position to own in an urban area, because it offers the best access to potential customers. This area becomes the city centre and is generally the hub of that particular urban area. Transport infrastructure tends to be the best in the centre and the city builds up around it, normally fairly evenly. The city centre becomes the most wealthy area of the city, and acquires specialist services, and prestige. Residential land use cannot compete financially with commercial land use, and so the residential areas are usually build further away from the centre. Many cities have grown as housing has out-bid agriculture for land on the outskirts of the urban area (Figure 1). The land value surface can be identified as a three-dimensional aspect of urban areas. It shows the general decline in land values with distance from the Central Business District (CBD) and also shows the subordinate peaks of land value. These are usually at places where general access is improved, such as at the intersection of some main roads in the suburbs of an urban area. Clusters of shops and small groups of offices can be found at locations such as this. In residential areas there are obvious differences when comparing the cost of housing, depending on a variety of factors. A general trend is that housing costs increase the further away they are from the CBD. This often leads to cheaper houses being built on the more expensive land closer to the centre, with the opposite occurring as you move further away from the centre. The reason for this is usually to do with the density at which the houses are built. The inner areas are often built at much higher levels of density, with the houses further away from the centre often being less dense. There are exceptions, where high-cost locations near the centre attract some high-value housing. For example, in London, areas like Kensington and Chelsea retain high-value residential areas because these neighbourhoods benefit from being close to the high-order functions of government and the City of London. Other areas, such as St Peter's Wharf, Sunderland, and LA Boca, in Buenos Aries, have been gentrified, which means that an influx of higher social-status groups have bought run-down properties and renovated them within the inner area of the city. The opposite can also apply, meaning that some lower value areas can be found on the outskirts of cities, usually in the form of local authority estates, such as Seacroft in Leeds.

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Notes, with images and videos covering the basic structure of the course.

Notes - Managing change in human environments