Topic 6.6 Density and Land Use: explain how density, bid-rent, zoning, and infill shape urban land use, and analyze the effects of low-density development and sprawl.

What this topic is asking

Topic 6.6 explains how density and land value shape urban land use. The College Board wants you to explain the bid-rent curve (how land value falls with distance from the center), how density varies across a city, the role of zoning and infill, and the effects of low-density development and sprawl. The skill is to link accessibility and land value to density, and to evaluate the consequences of how cities spread.

The bid-rent curve and density

Land value and accessibility drive the density pattern.

This is the urban version of the Von Thünen logic (Topic 5.8): just as transport cost sorts farm uses around a market, accessibility and bid-rent sort urban uses around the CBD.

Zoning and infill

Governments shape land use directly.

Zoning explains much of the orderly land-use pattern of cities, and infill is a key tool for managing growth without spreading outward.

The effects of low-density development and sprawl

The exam wants the consequences of how cities grow.

Urban sprawl is the spread of low-density, car-dependent development over a large area at the urban edge. Its effects include:

• Loss of farmland and open space, as thin development consumes land.
• Increased car dependence and commuting, raising traffic and emissions.
• Higher infrastructure costs, as roads, water, and services must reach a spread-out population.
• Habitat fragmentation and environmental pressure.

These effects set up the urban sustainability responses of Topics 6.8 and 6.11, and the challenges of Topic 6.10.

Why this matters for the exam

Topic 6.6 supplies the accessibility-and-density logic behind the city-structure models of Topic 6.5 and feeds directly into infrastructure (6.7), sustainability (6.8), and urban challenges (6.10, 6.11). FRQs ask you to describe the bid-rent curve, explain an effect of sprawl, or explain how infill responds to it, so practice linking land value to density and evaluating low-density growth.

Try this

Q1. Identify why land value is highest near the central business district according to the bid-rent curve. [Recall]

• Cue. Accessibility to jobs, customers, and transport is greatest there, so many users compete and rent rises; value and density fall with distance from the center.

Q2. Explain one effect of low-density suburban sprawl. [Short explanation]

• Cue. Sprawl consumes farmland and open space and increases car dependence and commuting, while raising the cost of providing roads, water, and services to a thinly spread population.