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Von Thunen Model

An economic land use model developed to explain the variation in the pricing
structure of agricultural commodities, based on zones of production. The model
is still widely studied and critiqued as a tool of analysis in economic geography,
and stands as one of the first examples of appliedlocational analysis.Asub-
sequent body of theory in urban and economic geography emerged from revisions
of von Thunen’s original work, including Alonso’sbid-rent theory, an application
of von Thunen’s agricultural-based ideas to the 20th-century urban environment.
Johan Heinrerich von Thunen was a businessman and landowner living in northern
Germany in the early 19th century. The fact that von Thunen was a resident of
northernGermany is relevant, because unlike in Bavaria, thelandscapein the
north is relatively flat, a feature of the local geography that clearly played a part
in the formation of his theory. As a businessman, von Thunen was interested in
discovering new methods of maximizing his profits, and in particular he put con-
siderable thought into the spatial ordering of production and transport of goods
to the market. After a number of years of observation and the development of
a mathematical model, he published his ideas in 1826 in his seminal work,The
Isolated State.
Like all models, von Thunen’s theory represents an idealized situation, and he
begins with a series of assumptions that he recognizes do not precisely reflect real-
ity. Nevertheless, these approximate the spatial and economic dynamics as von
Thunen interpreted them in the pre-industrial economy he was observing. First,
von Thunen assumed the existence of a single market town located at the center
of a flat, uniform plain. There are no intervening settlements offering marketing
opportunities between areas of agricultural production and this market—all
production must be marketed and consumed in this singlelocation. Second, the
agriculturalregionsurrounding the market town is homogeneous in terms of all
factors affecting production. In other words, there is no spatial variation in soil
quality, availability of water, input of labor, fertilizer, etc., and in theory, any crop
may be grown for profit on any land around the market. Moreover, von Thunen
assumed that only a single means of transportation was available to agricultural
producers (an oxcart), and that all farmers living at a similar distance from the
market had equal access to this type of transport. Farmers would carry their goods

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