Application of the Dynamic Spatial Ordered Probit Model: Patterns of Land Development Change in Austin, Texas

The evolution of land development in urban area has been of great interest to policy makers and planners. Due to the complexity of the land development process, no existing studies is considered sophisticated enough. This research uses Dynamic Spatial Ordered Probit (DSOP) model to analyze Austin’s land use intensity patterns over a 4-point panel. The observational units are 300m×300m grid cells derived from satellite images. The sample contains 2,771 such grid cells, spread among 57 zip code regions. The estimation suggests that increases in travel times to CBD substantially reduce land development intensity. More important, temporal and spatial autocorrelation effects are significantly positive, showing the superiority of the DSOP model.