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.3 of 22 was determined by rent, i.e., income from agricultural production reduced by production costs. He suggested that, where the natural features of the farm, such as climate, soil, topography, and other factors remain constant, the location of agricultural production was determined by the distance or costs of transportation to the urban market. With increasing distance from the town, the land will progressively be given up to products that are cheap to transport in relation to their value [30]. Though this theory is obsolete, its main assumptions about the very large role of location as a factor in land use changes should not be underestimated [31]. The direct approach applies the Thünian model of rural land-use allocation to the problem of urban-rural land conversion [32]. This was also explicitly articulated by Sinclair [33], who argued that, with urban sprawl, increasing competition for land comes from non-agricultural uses. He noted that, in many advanced industrialised parts of the world, the basic forces determining agricultural land use near urban areas are associated with urban expansion. Where these forces are in operation, the agricultural pattern quite often is one of increasing intensity with distance from the city. Non-agricultural uses which bring higher rents "push" agricultural production beyond cities [33].An urban location model linked to von Thünen's theory has been developed by Alonso [26]. His model can be regarded as the basis for household location choice [20]. Alonso's bid-rent theory explained the relationship between land prices and land use as follows: in a competitive land market, land-users seek to maximise their utility, land being purchased/rented ...
