A working estate manager at Tellow, von Thünen asked what a farmer should produce at a given distance from town and answered with the first spatial economic model. In an isolated state on uniform land with a single market, transport cost per unit of produce rises with distance, so land rent falls away from the centre and land uses sort themselves into concentric rings - market gardening and dairying nearest, then forestry for fuel, then grain rotations, then extensive grazing. He derived rent as revenue minus production and transport cost, and tested the result against his own farm accounts. Later volumes extended the model to wage and interest theory.
The rent gradient is the ancestor of every model explaining why cities are dense at the centre and thin at the edge, and why land uses sort themselves by accessibility. Burgess's concentric zones, Christaller's hierarchy, Alonso's bid rent and today's integrated land-use and transport models all descend from Tellow.
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