ABSTRACT
The land question is central to urban economic analysis. So crucial is land to production that the early classical economists such as David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus devoted substantial parts of their enquiry to its study (Hubacek and Van Den Bergh, 2006). However, as noted by Stilwell and Jordan (2004, p. 119), in recent years the study of land has taken a back seat in economic analysis. When urban economists study land today, they generally use a neoclassical framework and are interested in land rent: how it arises and whether the land market is efficient. They are also interested in how these dynamics work to impact land use (e.g., O’Sullivan, 2003). Among urban political economists, rent is still studied but other frameworks – such as Polanyi’s approach to the social embeddedness of economic activity (Polanyi, [1944] 2001) or the Marxist political economy framework of scholars like David Harvey (1973) – are used. Concerns such as monopoly and class monopoly rent, and differential rent are paramount (see Stilwell, 1992b, pp. 69–73 for discussion). In particular, urban political economists tend to be more interested in how the ownership, allocation and distribution of land affect the distribution of other resources in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas (for examples, see Moyo and Yeros, 2005).
