Urban Transactions: Investigating the Relationship between Spatial Preference and Spatial Configuration in the City of Leeds

This paper describes a composite method that can be used to investigates the relationship between spatial preference (in relation to commercial real estate occupation) and spatial configuration. The key finding in this paper (based on research in the city of Leeds in the UK) is that there is a potential link between urban configuration and spatial preference that could be exploited. Traditionally, the pursuit of urban land economics has been supply driven, reliant on the rational assumptions of neo classical economic analysis. Consumer behaviour is typically an implicit assumption rather than explicit variable in traditional economic analysis. This is because it has been difficult to reveal the characteristics of economic demand (the subjective behaviour of real life participants in the urban land transaction process) and its interaction with the urban environment. In conclusion, the method demonstrated in this paper reveals how the human interaction with space (its behavioural characteristics and transactional dialogue), can be explicitly analysed, visualised and combined in order to improve the urban development process.