ABSTRACT
Although most towns and cities have occupied the same location for centuries, the buildings and other physical infrastructure which comprise the built environment are not fixed but affected continuously by dynamic forces of change initiated by public and private interests. This modification of the urban environment occurs at a variety of scales ranging from the residential relocation decisions of individual households to large-scale projects including public road-building programmes and private house-building schemes. In addition, to differing degrees in different countries, the operation of these 'market forces' is influenced (enhanced or constrained) by national and local planning. The net effect of these socio-spatial processes is revealed most clearly in the land-use structure of the city. In this chapter we examine the principal models and theories of urban land use. For analytical convenience these are arranged into four broad types based on the principles of:
1. morphogenesis; 2. human ecology; 3. political economy; 4. postmodernism.
