Spatial Interaction Models with Land Use

This chapter presents a review of the literature on land use models structured according to disaggregation of space, time and decision-makers and representing the process of land use mosaic and change. Geographical models relate land use to the properties of the land supply, its suitability for different types of use and its location. Economic models assume that land use is determined by the demand for land, influenced by a system of preferences, motivations, markets, accessibility, and population. Agronomic models do not include spatial interaction and have as a fundamental reference each plot of soil, apt to different types of culture, conditioned both by the markets and by the aptitudes of each territory unit to a certain type of culture. Spatial interaction models focus mainly the movement of flows across space constrained by the attrition of distance between origins and destinations. Finally, integrated models, join spatial interaction with land use explicitly including human behaviour in the decision-making processes and diversified land properties.

This chapter presents a review of the literature on the location of economic activities according to distances to the location of supply factors and to the location of the demand products. Plus a proposal of land suitability classes defined by the list of land uses that can compete for each land class, dependent on precipitation, temperature, soil, slope and infrastructure. Regarding the literature on location the recognized models of (Thünen, Isolated State: an English edition of Der Isolierte Staat, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1826; Isard, Location and space-economy; a general theory relating to industrial location, market areas, land use, trade, and urban structure. Published jointly by the Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wiley, Cambridge, 1956; Perroux, Note sur la notion de pole de croissance? Economic Appliqee 307–320 1955; Perroux, Regional economics: theory and practice. The Free Press, New York, 1970; Myrdal, Economic theory and underdeveloped regions. Gerald Duckworth, London 1957; Hirschman, The strategy of economic development. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1958; North, Agriculture in regional economic growth. Am J Agric Econ 41(5):943–951, 1959; Krugman, J Polit Econ 99:483–499, 1991) are described. Explaining the method adopted in the book the method proposed is exemplified for land suitability classes for the North of Morocco and for Terceira Island for five land uses: urban, horticulture, agriculture, pasture and forest.

This chapter presents the computer model named SIMLU to model land use spatial interaction model that distributes employment by sectors of activity and resident population and land uses across and the different areas and land aptitude of the study area, depending on factors such as distance, transport cost and aptitudes and the effect attractiveness generated in each zone. The equilibrium between demand and supply of land is made through the calibration of rents (bid-rents) for each land aptitude class in each zone.

This chapter uses a spatial interaction model with land use, able to understand the interaction between the economy and the territory, trying to understand the evolution of land use on the island of São Jorge in the Azores from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The chapter presents the historical data of the island of São Jorge that are most relevant for the analysis, the formulation of the spatial interaction model with land use and the simulations of the model for the various centuries both for the island of São Jorge and for the area of Velas that we wish to analyse in more detail.

This chapter applies the spatial interaction model with land use to Terceira island involving: (1) the delimitation of study areas, collection and processing of data relating to: population, occupation of the territory, employment, aggregation of the main economic activities, productivity and consumption by economic sector; (2) collection of data related to the climatic variables of Terceira, orography, soils and territory occupation; (3) determination of soil suitability for each activity considered; (4) carrying out surveys among farmers about the value of agricultural land; (5) model calibration and validation; and (6) application of the model to 5 scenarios of climate change because they involve changes in the basic employment due to the changes in land aptitudes associated to global warming. The model allows to estimate the impacts on the employment in different sectors of activity, their spatial distribution and, using bid-rents, to estimate the changes in real value of the land.

The aim of this paper is to propose and test a systemic cost–benefit method to evaluate changes on environmental services based on a spatial interaction model with land use. The calibrated bid-rents of the model relate to land values for the present situation and once adjusted to simulations of policy scenarios show variations in land values that reveal changes in the value of ecosystem services. Besides the presentation of the method, the paper evaluates two policy scenarios in the Ourika Valley, in Morocco: keep pasture or promote the forestation of the erosive pasture. The paper concludes that forestation is worse in terms of job loss, but it is better in terms of changes in total economic value.