Von Thunen’s Spatial Land Use: Grasslands and Cities

A decade after the publication of Ricardo’s rent theory focusing on the cropland, von Thunen published a spatial land use theory entitled “The Isolated State.” In it, he explained in economic terms how different types of land use are adopted in the isolated state by its citizens, whose land use types included a center market, intensive farming such as dairy and vegetables, forestlands for fuel woods, extensive farming such as field crops, and ranching. At the outermost lands with no market value, wasted lands called wilderness surround the isolated state. Von Thunen explained that landowners choose the specific land use type that yields the largest profit on their respective land. In addition to differences in soil fertility and climate, if the model is interpreted broadly, a distance from the center market is a deciding factor of land use because of the freight cost to the center market. This chapter introduces a so-called wasteland critique who unintentionally treats non-crop lands as a wasteland of no value.