Urban and built-up land area changes in the United States: an empirical investigation of determinants.

Conversion of commodity-producing rural lands to urban and other built-up uses received considerable attention in the professional literature and in the popular press in the early 1980s (U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Council on Environmental Quality 1981 ; Fischel 1982; Raup 1980; Brown, et al. 1982). Although some have concluded that the forces encouraging the conversion of land will remain and become stronger (e.g., Barron and Dickinson 1975), few empirical studies at regional or national levels have examined determinants of area changes for urban and built-up uses or supported long-term area projections of such uses. Possible determinants include the inter-regional distribution of population growth and patterns of land use within regions, particularly patterns of human settlement.