This paper examines the ability of proportional hazard models to evaluate changes in land use through time. There are three specific objectives: (i) to review previous research on the complexity of urbanization and explain how the spatial hazard framework accommodates that complexity; (ii); to estimate a series of spatial hazard models characterizing land use in the 25 highest-growth core based statistical areas of the United States areas in 1990, 2000, and 2006; and (iii) to use the estimation results to track land use change region-by-region over the 16-year timeframe. Overall, the analysis reveals that the spatial hazard framework offers a highly effective means of describing land use change. Along the way, it also illustrates that the classic model of urbanization continues to hold in an evermore-complex world — albeit, in an explicitly uncertain and inherently probabilistic manner.