Choice of Land Use Development Type within Commercial and Industrial Zoning

This paper expands upon previous literature for land use and transportation interactions by modeling nonresidential land development in Windsor, Ontario. Separate logit models were created for commercial and industrial development to capture the developer’s choice of development type. These choices were categorized as office, retail, restaurant, and other for commercial developments and warehouse, factory, and other for industrial developments. The development type choice was calibrated using four separate models, as follows: (1) multinomial logit, (2) nested logit, (3) multinomial logit with spatial effects, and (4) nested logit with spatial effects. Significant spatial correlations on decisions for commercial development were observed, illustrating the impact of agglomeration economies. Warehousing developments were particularly influenced by transportation with three positively significant transportation proximity measures. This is especially important since the study area resides within a heavy trade corridor between the United States and Canada.