Urban Economic Theory

Urban Economic Theory
Author: Masahisa Fujita
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1991-01-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521396455

This book examines the economic reasons why people choose to live where they live and develops, through analysis of the bid rent function, a unified theory of urban land use and city size. The first part of the book explicates the basic theory of urban land use and optimal city size. Residential location behavior of households is examined in a microeconomic framework and equilibrium and optimal patterns of residential land use are discussed. The corresponding equilibrium and optimal city sizes are studied in a variety of contexts. Part Two extends the classical theories of von Thunen and Alonso with the addition of externality factors such as local public goods, crowding and congestion, and racial prejudice. The rigorous mathematical approach and theoretical treatment of the material make Urban Economic Theory of interest to researchers in urban economics, location theory, urban geography, and urban planning.

Urban Dynamics and Urban Externalities

Urban Dynamics and Urban Externalities
Author: Y. Kanemoto
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136473386

This title combines reviews of two of the most important branches of urban economics: dynamics and externalities.

Economics of Urban Externalities

Economics of Urban Externalities
Author: Shiva Raj Adhikari
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2016-02-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811005451

This book provides a fresh look at measuring negative externalities in the urbanization process. Meeting the challenges that come hand-in-hand with the contemporary age of rapid urbanization demands more extensive empirical knowledge. While most urbanization research focuses on positive externalities, this book is designed to offer insights into possible sources of negative externalities and the measurement thereof. In economics, the measurement of externalities is a challenging task that demands innovative research designs; however, previous research has failed to capture all of these externalities. The technique described in this book is carefully designed to measure negative externalities, particularly those related to squatter settlements that have been hitherto largely ignored by urbanization literature. The existence of negative externalities and the unintended consequences of rapid urbanization, particularly those related to squatter settlements, can be found in Latin America and Asia. This book provides comparative insights based on extensive primary surveys of households in squatter and non-squatter settlements of Kathmandu, Nepal and Quito, Ecuador. It is considered a case study that will improve the understanding of urbanization issues between Latin America and Asia. Societal benefits can be improved through the reduction of negative externalities. This book helps policy makers in Kathmandu and Quito fine-tune their policies to address the source of urban externality, as well as provide new insights into the nexus between urbanization and development. An investment in the reduction of negative externalities is profitable, thus presenting the government and international partners with a great opportunity. This book contributes to existing literature and will be useful for researchers and students.

Order without Design

Order without Design
Author: Alain Bertaud
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262550970

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities’ development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners’ dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities’ productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice

Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice
Author: Paul James
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317658361

Cities are home to the most consequential current attempts at human adaptation and they provide one possible focus for the flourishing of life on this planet. However, for this to be realized in more than an ad hoc way, a substantial rethinking of current approaches and practices needs to occur. Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice responds to the crises of sustainability in the world today by going back to basics. It makes four major contributions to thinking about and acting upon cities. It provides a means of reflexivity learning about urban sustainability in the process of working practically for positive social development and projected change. It challenges the usually taken-for-granted nature of sustainability practices while providing tools for modifying those practices. It emphasizes the necessity of a holistic and integrated understanding of urban life. Finally it rewrites existing dominant understandings of the social whole such as the triple-bottom line approach that reduce environmental questions to externalities and social questions to background issues. The book is a much-needed practical and conceptual guide for rethinking urban engagement. Covering the full range of sustainability domains and bridging discourses aimed at academics and practitioners, this is an essential read for all those studying, researching and working in urban geography, sustainability assessment, urban planning, urban sociology and politics, sustainable development and environmental studies.

An Economic Theory of Cities

An Economic Theory of Cities
Author: Wei-Bin Zhang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3642560601

Over more than two centuries the developmentofeconomic theory has created a wide array of different concepts, theories, and insights. My recent books, Capital and Knowledge (Zhang, 1999) and A TheoryofInternational Trade (Zhang, 2000) show how separate economic theories such as the Marxian economics, the Keynesian economics, the general equilibrium theory, the neoclassical growth theory, and the neoclassical trade theory can be examined within a single theoretical framework. This book isto further expand the frameworkproposed in the previous studies. This book is a part of my economic theory with endogenous population, capital, knowledge, preferences, sexual division of labor and consumption, institutions, economic structures and exchange values over time and space (Zhang, 1996a). As an extension of the Capital and Knowledge, which is focused on the dynamics of national economies, this book is to construct a theory of urban economies. We are concerned with dynamic relations between division of labor, division ofconsumption and determination of prices structure over space. We examine dynamic interdependence between capital accumulation, knowledge creation and utilization, economicgrowth, price structuresand urban pattern formation under free competition. The theory is constructed on the basisofa few concepts within a compact framework. The comparative advantage of our theory is that in providing rich insights into complex of spatial economies it uses only a few concepts and simplified functional forms and accepts a few assumptions about behavior of consumers, producers, and institutionalstructures.

Theory and Measurement of Economic Externalities

Theory and Measurement of Economic Externalities
Author: Steven A. Y. Lin
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2014-05-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1483271471

Theory and Measurement of Economic Externalities provides information on some analytical and empirical developments in the field of externalities. This book presents the function of turning out producer's goods in the form of better knowledge, analytical formulation, and approaches for application to current problems. Organized into five parts encompassing 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the notion of externalities in connection with analyses of economic welfare. This text then discusses the relationship between publicness and external diseconomies when either consumption or production or decision sets are nonconvex due to a high degree of externalities. Other chapters consider disproving the pessimistic conclusions concerning tax–subsidy schemes. This book discusses as well the solutions for the allocation of resources in an economy with public goods and interdependent preferences. The final chapter deals with a general framework for estimating externality production functions. This book is a valuable resource for economists.

Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics

Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics
Author: V. Henderson
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 1081
Release: 2004-07-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0080495125

The new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics: Cities and Geography reviews, synthesizes and extends the key developments in urban and regional economics and their strong connection to other recent developments in modern economics. Of particular interest is the development of the new economic geography and its incorporation along with innovations in industrial organization, endogenous growth, network theory and applied econometrics into urban and regional economics. The chapters cover theoretical developments concerning the forces of agglomeration, the nature of neighborhoods and human capital externalities, the foundations of systems of cities, the development of local political institutions, regional agglomerations and regional growth. Such massive progress in understanding the theory behind urban and regional phenomenon is consistent with on-going progress in the field since the late 1960's. What is unprecedented are the developments on the empirical side: the development of a wide body of knowledge concerning the nature of urban externalities, city size distributions, urban sprawl, urban and regional trade, and regional convergence, as well as a body of knowledge on specific regions of the world—Europe, Asia and North America, both current and historical. The Handbook is a key reference piece for anyone wishing to understand the developments in the field.