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This paper introduces the impact of online competition to analysis of the urban configuration of a small open city, which was first developed by Alonso (1964. Location and Land Use. Cambridge: Harvard University Press), Mills (1967. "An Aggregative Model of Resource Allocation in a Metropolitan Area." The American Economic Review 57 (2): 197–210), and Muth (1969. Cities and Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press) (AMM hereafter). In comparison to a revised AMM model in Lai and Tsai (2008. "Simplified Alonso-Mills-Muth Model with a Monopoly Vendor." Journal of Urban Economics 63 (2): 536–43) which assumed a monopoly vendor, the present paper's online entry brings competition, eventually causes price reduction, city expansion, and asymmetrically ascending land rent, and makes the incumbent vendor relocate to a more remote city boundary. When the disadvantage of online purchasing is not large, the urban configuration demonstrates that most residents purchase online, and only the residents living near the physical vendor make shopping trips. Finally, the benefit of city expansion from online competition eventually goes to the absentee landowners by way of the raised land rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models are developed to examine the application and effects of urban growth control concepts to both absentee and resident landowners. Results show that absentee landowners approve the imposition of strict growth controls since they would benefit from increases in rent. On the other hand, resident landowners do not derive benefits from rent increases caused by growth controls since they pay rent to themselves.