Urban sprawl occurrence under spatially varying agricultural amenities

• Spatially varying agriculture introduced into a classical monocentric city model
• Joint-production of agricultural outputs and externalities
• Endogenous agricultural amenities valued by households
• Importance of the capacity of a farm to provide amenities, as a driver of sprawl
• Leapfrog development can occur in a city surrounded by heterogeneous agriculture.

This paper presents a spatially explicit model to examine the importance of agricultural amenities as a determinant of the urban and suburban spatial structures. By introducing endogenous agricultural amenities into the classical monocentric model, we provide an intuitive explanation of leapfrog development. We show how urban development patterns highly depend on the intensity of surrounding farms and their ability to produce amenities. We also show that, even in the absence of a particular landscape feature or any exogenous source of amenities, fragmented urban sprawl is a natural development pattern for a city surrounded by a spatially varying agricultural environment.