The Structure of Urban Land Prices

Recognition of the existence of nonlinear land prices has an impact on the measurement of the rate at which land price declines with distance from the urban center. It is hypothesized that concave parcel prices have given rise to overly large estimates of the rate of price decline with distance, because parcel sizes increase with distance and increased parcel sizes would be associated with lower unit prices as a result of the concavity of the land price function. This hypothesis is empirically tested using vacant residential, commercial, and industrial land sales from within Cook County, Illinois. An important finding is that allowing for concavity greatly reduces, although it does not eliminate, measured rates of price decline with distance.