An empirical model of urban fringe land use

This paper offers an empirical model of land use in an urban fringe area of Chicago, McHenry County, that directly predicts land use. Three land uses are considered: agricultural, residential, and vacant. A multinomial logit model is estimated; the purpose of the model is to determine the probability that a property was in a given use at the time of sale. Explanatory variables include the size of the property, distances from Chicago and nearby smaller towns, and characteristics of the quarter-section in which the property is located. The model does not predict vacant and agricultural land use as accurately as residential, but does outperform a naive, equal-probability model. The model provides some interesting results. -from Author