Understanding Urban Form through the Land Value Map: A Preliminary Study on Taichung City

Abstract

Based on the bid rent theory, a thematic map depicting the pattern of land value of a city could be an effective tool to understand its urban form because the land value pattern reflects the cities' structures of both accessibility and land use intensity. This paper presents a case study of the aforementioned argument using the urbanized area of the Taichung City in central Taiwan as the study area. The paper outlines a regression analysis, whose dependent variable is the government appraised land value and two independent variables are accessibility and land use intensity factors, to verify the connection between land value and urban form and determine to what extent they interact. The result shows that the two factors account for nearly 50% of the land-value variation. Further examining those spots where disparity between actual and estimated land values located reveals even more insights about the city.