LAND RENT, TRANSPORT POLICIES AND BUILDING CONSTRAINTS

The paper adds a policy variable seldom found in the mainstream literature that focuses generally on land rent generated by transport costs: building constraints, that are by themselves generators of rent. These three variables (transport costs, land rent and building constraints) do obviously interact in very complex way. We try some radical simplification that seems to show a certain number of distributive, and related policy consequences, far from obvious: in particular a) the possible meaning of urban sprawl as an “escape from rent” (with trade-offs between rent and transport costs) and b) the role of “dispersed” (i.e. car-driven) accessibility against concentrated (i.e. public transport driven) solutions, at least in some circumstances. The tools employed are also, at this stage of the research, quite simple (linear graphic relations), in order to state some initial finding. But this is a start-up approach, with a range of theoretical and empirical researches to follow.