"Urban sprawl is a remarkable socioeconomic phenomenon that continues to generate attention across Europe and beyond. In its broadest sense, urban sprawl may be defined as the spreading out of a city and its suburbs over increasingly large areas of rural land at the periphery of an urban area and the consequent conversion of open space into developed land.The research project described in this proposal explores the economic processes under-pinning the phenomenon of urban sprawl. Its objective is to describe and explain urban spatial structure and its evolution. In particular, the project will investigate the role of the spatial distribution of environmental amenities in urban sprawl and the influence of future land development on agricultural land values.The originality of this project is to consider urban sprawl as a simultaneous result of two mechanisms. On the one hand, are the effects of the behaviour of households and firms and the development patterns that they engender in peri-urban areas, while on the other hand is the influence of evolving land values and of developing agricultural and land use policies. This project will consider the literatures on these mechanisms and seek to identify new approaches to understand and limit urban sprawl."