Agricultural Land vs. Urbanisation in Chosen Polish Metropolitan Areas: A Spatial Analysis Based on Regression Trees

The goal of this paper is to explore intra-regional differences in factors determining land use. We built spatial regression tree models to assess the factors determining the share of agricultural area in municipalities of selected Polish metropolitan areas in 2010. The analyses are static, with the value of exogenous variables presented as an average for the longest possible period preceding the year 2010. We analysed the impact of socio-economic processes, natural conditions, and farming characteristics on the share of agricultural land in the surface area of particular municipalities in metropolitan areas. Based on the concept of economic rents that says that the way land is used is determined by economic rent, we have shown that the most important factor with an impact on the share of agricultural land is the number of enterprises per 10,000 people of working age. Other very important factors have been found to be the quality of environmental conditions of agricultural production, population density, and net migration. It was noted that with an increase in the rate of enterprises, as well as an increase in population density and net migration, the share of agricultural land falls, and a high quality of agricultural production comes with a relatively high share of agricultural land in the surface area of the municipalities analysed.