GPSS Doctoral Student Publishes Study on Changes in Tokyo's Urban Agricultural Land, Accessibility Implications, and the Underlying Mechanisms

GPSS doctoral student Weicheng Li, supervised by Assoc. Prof. Toru Terada and Project Lecturer Giles B. Sioen, has published a study in City and Environment Interactions titled "Urban agricultural land transitions in Tokyo: spatiotemporal dynamics, driving mechanisms, and accessibility implications."

Urban agriculture can provide cities with locally produced food while also contributing to disaster resilience, green space, and connections between residents and agricultural landscapes. In densely populated urban regions, however, agricultural land is under continuing pressure from urban development. Its loss and fragmentation may affect not only the amount available but also how easily residents can access these resources. Understanding how agricultural land transitions influence accessibility and the underlying mechanisms of these changes is therefore important for sustaining the functions of urban agriculture in rapidly changing cities.

This study investigates how agricultural land transitions reshape urban agricultural accessibility in Tokyo across two periods (1991/92–2006/07 and 2006/07–2021/22), using a gravity-based accessibility model and path analysis. Over the past three decades, Tokyo lost approximately 44% of its agricultural land as urbanization progressed. The study reveals that agricultural accessibility declined more sharply during the later period despite slower agricultural land loss, highlighting the increasing importance of the spatial distribution and connectivity of remaining agricultural land. Areas with high farmer density were more strongly associated with residential conversion, while population aging weakened the influence of both land price and farmer density on agricultural land conversion. These findings provide a transferable framework for understanding how agricultural accessibility changes alongside land use transitions and offer insights for sustainable planning in late-stage, aging, and high-density urban regions worldwide.