This paper describes micro-economic models of land use change applicable to the rural-urban interface in the US. Use of a spatially explicit micro-level modelling approach permits the analysis of regional patterns of land use as the aggregate outcomes of many, disparate individual land use decisions distributed across space. In contrast to the models featured by Nelson and Geoghegan, we focus on models that require spatially articulated data on parcel-levelland use changes through time. In characterising the spatially disaggregated models, we highlight issues uniquely related to the management and generation of spatial data and the estimation of micro-level spatial models. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.