Dissertations / Theses on the topic '140218 Urban and Regional Economics'

In this set of essays, I grapple with issues related to the core questions of urban economics. Why are people so heavily clustered in urban areas? Why do some cities grow while others decline? What explains where people live within urban areas? My first essay focuses on understanding patterns of racial segregation within metro areas. One factor that has long been hypothesized to contribute to this divide, but has proven difficult to test empirically, is that local zoning regulations have an exclusionary impact on minority residents in some neighborhoods. I focus on variation in block-level racial composition within narrow bands around zone borders within jurisdictions. My results imply a large role for local zoning regulation, particularly the permitting of dense multi-family structures, in explaining disparate racial location patterns. The second essay returns to core issues of agglomeration and the role of cities. The fact that wages tend to be higher in cities, and that this premium grows with density, has been seen as strong evidence for urban agglomeration forces enhancing productivity. In modern data this density premium seems only to exist in areas with above average levels of human capital. Agglomeration models emphasizing learning and knowledge spillovers between workers in close proximity seem most compatible with the data. Finally, I investigate the impact of local governance structure on urban growth over the last 40 years. Some economists have touted the virtues of competition between fragmented local governments in efficient provision of local public goods, while regionalists have pointed to the need to coordinate planning and infrastructure across jurisdictions, and warned of the impacts of fractionalization on segregation and sprawl. While cities with regionalized governments have grown more rapidly, a small set of strong historical correlates with local government density can account for this. Impacts on segregation are more robust.
Economics

Urban and regional development decisions have long-term, often irreversible impacts on the natural and built environment. These changes impact society’s wellbeing, yet rarely occur in the context of well understood economic costs and benefits. The cumulative effects of these individually small land use decisions are also very large. Ecological economics provides several frameworks that could inform more sustainable development patterns and practices, including ecosystem service valuation (ESV) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). This dissertation consists of a series of articles addressing urban and regional development from an ecological economic perspective, using GPI, ESV, and evaluation of tax and subsidy programs. The GPI has been well developed at the national level but is of growing interest to stakeholders and citizens interested in better measuring social welfare at local and regional scales. By integrating measures of built, human, social, and natural capital, GPI provides a more comprehensive assessment of social welfare than consumption-based macroeconomic indicators. GPI’s monetary basis allows these diverse metrics to be integrated, and can also facilitate intra- and inter-regional comparisons of social welfare. Ecosystem services are also increasingly recognized as important contributors to human well-being, particularly in areas where they are becoming scarce due to rapid land conversion. Despite recent advances in measuring and valuing ecosystem services, they are often not considered in decision making because of both scientific uncertainty and the difficulty in weighing these values in tradeoffs. Techniques to speed the valuation process while maintaining accuracy are thus in high demand. As public recognition of the value of ecosystem services grows, ESV can serve as the basis for a variety of policy tools, from inclusion in traditional permitting or conservation easement programs to new programs such as payments for ecosystem services. Ideally planners, citizens, and decision makers would better weigh the diverse costs and benefits of land use decisions as part of development and conservation planning. By quantifying changes in: 1) contributors to social welfare and 2) the value of ecosystem services across the urban-rural gradient, the GPI and ESV frameworks developed as part of this dissertation can thus be used to better inform local and regional policy and planning.

The concept of Region is one of the elements which has differentiated Regional Economics from other fields of Applied Economics. In spite of this, however, researchers in this field of economic analysis have not paid a great deal of attention to this concept. All too often, Regions have been identified with the politico-administrative units into which nationstates have divided their territory and for which statistical information is widely available. However, a Region can be defined in many different ways. Frameworks which define regions according to analytical/theoretical criteria provide greater scope for applied studies and permit a more complete interpretation of the results contained therein. In this research we have proposed a concept of Region which goes beyond the administrative division of territory. Our regional aggregation has been based on agglomeration economies, one of the fundamental concepts in the fields of Economic Geography and Urban and Regional Economics. In accordance with the work of Polèse et al. (2007), the territory has been classified into analytical regions which take into account the size of the population and the distance from the main urban areas. In doing so, we achieve an aggregation which corresponds with the differences in agglomeration economies across space. However, their robustness in comparison with the administrative units commonly used has - to date - not been evaluated.The objective of the first chapter of this thesis was to prove that the functional regions defined under such economic criteria provide better defined regions - in terms of greater compactness and separation - than the administrative ones commonly used to carry out labour market studies at sub-national level. Using micro data from the last available Spanish Census, the functional and administrative regions are evaluated using the Theil index and the Davies-Bouldin Validation index. Applied to employment (by gender, industry and level of qualification and occupation), both indexes show better results for the analytical regions than for any of the ordinary administrative ones (NUTS I, II or III regions). In other words, the analytical classification generates areas where the distribution of employment is more homogeneous within and more heterogeneous between the regions. Agglomeration economies and distance (to the metropolis) seem to be relevant for understanding the patterns of distribution of employment, either by gender, by industry or by level of qualification and occupation. In practice, this provides a clearer way for identifying local labour markets and explaining their differences and similarities. In light of the results from the first chapter, we suggest the use of this alternative classification -subject, of course, to the availability of data - when carrying out Labour Economics studies that include a spatial dimension. The following chapters have provided two applications of this analytical division of the territory to Labour Economics issues: the factors affecting the probability of being employed (Chapter 2) and the effects that labour mobility and commuting have on the central regions (Chapter 3). In the second chapter, we presented a spatial analysis of employment at local level where, among other factors, the demographic and geographical characteristics can and do affect the outcome. The empirical results support the hypothesis that size - in terms of population - and location - in terms of distance to a metropolis - are explanatory variables for the probability of being employed. In other words, employment depends not only on the personal characteristics of the individuals (level of education, age, sex, etc.) but also on the type of analytical region - as defined in Chapter 1 - where they live. Regarding the importance of location, our results show a significant gap in the chances of being employed between "central" and "peripheral" types of regions, i.e., the closer the region is to the metropolis, the higher the concentration of economic activity and therefore employment. Likewise, the types of regions, i.e., the closer the region is to the metropolis, the higher the concentration of economic activity and therefore employment. Likewise, theexpected negative relationship between employment and the size of the region where the individual lives is confirmed, and this seems to be stronger for non-skilled individuals than for people with university studies. In terms of employability, the largest Spanish metropolitan areas (MA1) seem to be enjoying the full benefits of agglomeration economies while the smaller metropolitan areas (MA2) seem to be suffering their negative effects. Likewise, for urban areas that cannot be considered "metropolitan areas" (UA1 and UA2), size does not seem to be as important as their central-peripheral location. In rural areas (less than 50,000 inhabitants), both size and distance seem to be relevant determinants of employability. In other words, regardless of the level of studies, there are fewer chances of being employed in rural areas as opposed to urban areas and in peripheral rural areas as opposed to central rural areas. Recognizing the importance of these spatially differentiated results should have a significant impact on current policy discussions, shifting the focus from general solutions to more spatially customized ones where size and location are considered. Just as differences in age, gender or industrial structure are taken into account in the design of employment policies (at national or local level), these results suggest that an additional spatial dimension that somehow includes the size and location of the local area where the person lives should be considered. Some important migration policy implications can also be derived when using these alternative functional regions to analyze the direct and indirect effects that the arrival of workers has in the core regions. Spain has experienced over the last two decades an intense arrival of both immigrants and in-migrants to its central regions, and as a consequence (though not exclusively) of these inflows, we can observe internal migrations and/or commuting to some areas that might be more attractive. Using the last available Census, the estimations for Spain of an input-output multi-regional model that includes the possibility of commuting show that the arrival of in- and im-migration to the core generates a set of effects induced by the redistribution of population among other regions. The arrival of workers from the periphery to the core provokes reallocations of residence in all cases (displacement effect).However, the intensity of these reallocations increases with size, which shows the existence of some agglomeration diseconomies associated with big cities. When the possibility of commuting is also considered, the arrival of workers from the periphery to the core generates the reallocation of both jobs (economic activity) and residences. The larger cities are the ones pushing out more residents to other areas, while keeping most of the jobs. In other words, they are becoming attractive areas to work in, but not to live in (due to, among other reasons, high housing costs, congestion or other negative externalities). The oppposite is true for the smaller cities, which are attractive for residing in but for working in. The distributional pattern of residences proves to be different to the distributional pattern of jobs. These results highlight the idea that the effects of the arrival of population are not only felt by the recipient region/city but may generate comparatively far larger effects on other regions in the form of internal migration and commuting flows, something that policy makers should bear in mind. To conclude, surpassing the administrative division of the territory, this classification manages to have explanatory power in spatial Labour Economics topics while including relevant geo-economic characteristics such as location and agglomeration economies. The use of this classification has proved to offer a better understanding of the patterns of distribution of employment (by gender, by industry or by level of qualification and occupation), job opportunities, and of the probabilities of being employed depending on the level of qualification or the degree of attractiveness of a region for working or living purposes. Some other questions spatially related to the performance of regional labour markets remain unanswered. Future lines of research include the application of this classification to the study of labour economic issues such as the determinants of unemployment, inter-industrial labour mobility or the existence of overqualification taking into account spatial factors (i.e. the type of analytical region where the potential worker lives) which are usually ignored.Agglomeration economies and distance play an important role in the location of economic activity, and therefore should affect the labour outcomes once the worker has decided to live in certain type of region. Obviously, such a decision does not have to be permanent, and workers can move in order to improve their labour opportunities. Therefore, a further possible question of relevance is the internal migration decisions between and within analytical regions. That is, can certain regularities be observed? Are people moving from peripheral regions to central or metropolitan areas or the other way round? Are internal migrations better explained in terms of size, i.e. in terms as counter-urbanization or urbanization? Are these movements linked to job opportunity decisions? Can we observe any differences according to their level of qualification? Even more, workers can be employed in a certain type of region but live in another, i.e., we could observe migration on a daily basis (commuting). Is one type of analytical region attracting workers or attracting residents? Do people tend to live and work in the same type of region? Could the analytical division be improved in order to specifically include the commuting criteria used in the local labour markets literature? We believe that these questions provide a fascinating and important future research agenda.

Cette thèse porte sur l’évaluation de quatre politiques d’aménagement du territoire en France. Elle aborde également trois questions majeures de l’économie urbaine : l'influence des transports sur la localisation de l'emploi et de la population, l’élasticité de l'offre de logement et la ségrégation urbaine. La première politique publique étudiée est le Réseau express régional. Ainsi, l’amélioration des transports publics en Île-de-France a favorisé la croissance de l’emploi dans les communes de banlieue. Il n’y aurait en revanche pas de croissance globale de la population mais un possible effet de gentrification à proximité des stations. Dans un deuxième temps, cette thèse s’intéresse au rôle du train à grande vitesse dans l’organisation spatiale des entreprises multi-implantations. Il est établi que les filiales voyant le temps de parcours vers leur siège diminuer se spécialisent dans les activités de production. Cette création s'effectue au détriment des activités d'encadrement. Ensuite, ce travail évalue l’impact des zones franches urbaines. L’effet de première génération de ce dispositif sur la localisation des entreprises et sur l'emploi est massif. En revanche, il n'a que faiblement profité aux habitants de ces quartiers, soulignant un manque de ciblage de la mesure. Le dernier chapitre évalue l’effet des aides au logement sur le niveau des loyers et l’offre de logements locatifs. Il confirme que les aides au logement induisent une hausse des loyers privés. L’élasticité de l'offre de logements reste faible dans le long terme, puisque l'effet inflationniste perdure tandis que la quantité et la qualité des logements locatifs ne s'adaptent pratiquement pas
This thesis evaluates four French urban and regional policies. It also covers three major issues in urban economics: the impact of transportation on the spatial distribution of employment and population, the elasticity of housing supply and urban segregation. First, the thesis focuses on the Regional Express Rail system. The improvement of public transport in the Paris region causes employment to grow in suburban municipalities. However, there is not effect on overall population growth but a possible gentrification effect nearby RER stations. Secondly, this thesis studies the role of high-speed rail in the spatial organization of multi-plant businesses. It shows that the reduction in travel time to their headquarters subsidiaries lead the affiliate to specialize in production activities, to the expense of management tasks. Then, this work assesses the impact of the French Urban Enterprise Zones. The first generation of this program have a massive impact on firm location and employment. However, it only slightly benefited to the local residents, highlighting a lack of targeting. The last chapter evaluates the effect of housing allowance on the level of rents and the supply of rental housing. It confirms that housing subsidies cause private rents to increase. The elasticity of housing supply remains low in the long term, since the upward effect does not vanish and the quantity and the quality of rental housing do not adjust

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2000.
"February 2000."
Includes bibliographical references.
Three studies were conducted to analyze the relationship between public infrastructure investment and regional economic performance. The first study examines the literature on economic development and productivity growth. I show that conflicting results from studies by other analysts are the likely result of poor public capital data spanning to short an interval, and an inadequate modeling framework. Public investment may generate small improvements in productivity, but models understate economic impacts owing to the public goods character of some forms of public capital. The second study explores the relationship between economic distress and public infrastructure investment. I use a sample of U.S. counties to analyze public investment according to level of economic distress. With simple investment models, I estimated infrastructure needs for counties with apparent shortfalls. I analyzed the needs-estimates in a series of case studies in which jurisdiction planning and budget personnel were consulted about the accuracy of the estimates. I show that short-run economic distress is not to be linked to public infrastructure investment. Over the long-run, investment varies by level of distress, but as a consequence of private residential investment. The needs-estimating models were reasonably accurate, but missing investment data proved troublesome. Counties proved to be a poor unit of analysis for infrastructure needs, as since significant variation was observed among jurisdictions within counties. The third study demonstrates the need for better estimates of public infrastructure capital stock. I prepared new capital stock estimates for two regions using local investment data and survey-based public capital service lives. I surveyed one thousand jurisdictions in the New England region and the state of Texas. Survey-based service-lives seem to differ significantly from estimated lives. Stock estimates using local investment data and survey-based service-lives produce dramatic differences compared to estimated stocks at the state and regional level. The new data, however, performed just as poorly as other series when used to estimate aggregate production functions. Prior analysts' understanding the relationship between economic performance and public infrastructure investment has been limited because of poor data, and inadequate appreciation of infrastructure's inherent complexity. The research presented here demonstrates that significant improvements are possible and worth undertaking.
by Nicholas O. Rockler.
Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2003.
Special Program of Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-145).
This thesis analyzes the perception gap between political risk assessments observed at the national level, and the different realities of sub-national city regions whose risk regime is not reflected by the national indicators, and its implication on foreign direct investment (FDI) location decisions. The purpose of this research is to understand how and why the national political risk assessments of countries with internal armed conflicts override the ability of regional investment promotion agencies to attract FDI into financially sound projects of high developmental value. This thesis complements the standard political risk underlying theories with geographical and behavioral economic theories, in order to propose a sub-national political-risk-assessment approach that could show the safer regions within riskier countries. It is based on the analysis of the Colombian Metallurgical Coke and Power Plant Project COLMECO, designed to be located in the Barranquilla Metropolitan Area, within the Atlantico Department, a region that has traditionally experienced no open internal armed conflict confrontation. The conclusions of this research prove and justify the sub-national risk assessment approach proposed.
by Alberto E. Blanco.
S.M.

Four different methods of separating indoor and outdoor water use in apartment complexes were studied to determine which one of the estimators was the best one. The four methods follow: (1) Actual Use Method; (2) Minimum Monthly Use; (3) Appliance Monthly Use; and (4) All Indoor Water Use method. The average indoor and outdoor water use per month per apartment household of each method were calculated to compare to each other. Also, several characteristics pertaining to complex size, average rent per month per household, vacancy rate, and manager's highest education level were examined to determine their effects on the indoor and outdoor water use.

Given Tucson Water's physical supply and institutional constraints and the utilities expressed interest in becoming a more efficient operation, rate schedules may be a most important management tool. A rate schedule based on consumer's true marginal willingness to pay expressed in accurate demand estimation would provide such a tool. This work examines the practical applicability of a model developed by James Opaluch for the Tucson area using data from a random sample of 46 single family households. The model allows for the relaxation of classical assumption that consumers have perfect information about the goods and services they purchase. It provides empirical evidence relating to the price and difference model as it relates to theoretic subsidization inherent in block rate structures and examines the effectiveness of the current increasing block rate in regards to consumer's perception of price elasticities.

Despite a wide assortment of problems that cover a broad range of topics, from questions and doubts about its theoretical underpinnings, to a host of application difficulties, economic base analysis still figures prominently in the geographic literature. This thesis uses the Arizona Community Data Set to examine two important issues that remain unresolved or inadequately addressed in the literature. The results presented support Tiebout's hypothesis that the Keynesian macroeconomic approach, emphasizing the role of all the sectors in an economy produces more reliable multipliers estimates than Hoyt's traditional approach. Additionally, it is shown that, through disaggregation, it is possible to use the relationships between sectoral basic and nonbasic employment to produce multipliers that resemble those obtained through input-output analysis. Overall the results suggest that with the use of reliable survey data the economic base concept can still produce valuable information on the effects of an impact in a small community.

This dissertation constructs a political ecology of two modern irrigation communities in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. In assessing the impacts of the 1992 restructuring of Mexico's water policy, the study contributes to debates within geography about global economic integration, the transformation of the state-society relationship, the interface of ecological change with structural and political demands, and the prescription of decentralization, privatization, and free trade strategies for improving water management in developing countries. The dissertation investigates these questions: How have the restructuring of water and agricultural policy impacted local producers in irrigation districts in Sonora? How have small communal producers (e.g., ejidatarios) responded to the water reform package? An underlying assumption is that Sonoran producers in irrigation districts are among the nation's most-advantaged, given their proximity to U.S. markets, access to irrigation, technological package, and experience with commercial production. Mexico's water and agriculture policies are intended to allow the strongest, most efficient producers to become more competitive. I argue, however, that the water and agricultural reform package overall does not benefit Sonoran producers, and particularly disadvantages the ejidatario sector of farmers, due to a cost squeeze driven by rising water and input costs, retrenchment of state support, and loss of subsidies, among other factors. Most ejidatario producers have abandoned production and their water and land assets are being privatized. Despite this overall finding, some ejidatarios have found entrepreneurial ways to adapt their productive responses to the new challenges. The global-local linkages in the districts demonstrate that different free trade agreements can have distinct impacts on producers of different crops and transnational companies can pose challenges to water-strapped local communities. The prolonged drought has contributed to a water shortage that limits profitability of agriculture. The state's promotion of water consumptive, export crops is at odds with the demands of nature that dictate less intensive agriculture in arid regions like Sonora, with implications for the sustainability of commercial agriculture. A concept of water as a social good---rather than a purely economic good---needs to be resuscitated in order to satisfy the rural development needs of Mexico's ejidatario producers.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Cleveland State University, 2008.
Abstract. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Mar. 2, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p.146-160) and appendices. Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center. Also available in print.

Providing secure and reliable water supply service to major urban areas has become a considerable challenge in recent years on a global basis. Rapid population growth, urbanization and development needs put enormous pressure on water resource managers to satisfy the ever-growing demand. Climate change, in addition to the inherent variability in hydrological cycles, adds another layer of deep uncertainty to forecast surface water availability. Many major cities have observed declining reservoir storages during unprecedented droughts. The once-reliable reservoir storage systems can no longer serve its purpose. During extended period of water shortages, urban residents and businesses suffered from mandatory water restrictions, causing large economic and social welfare losses. Facing these challenges, water utilities and governments make large investments in supply augmentation infrastructure, which have long-term consequences that can shape development for decades. However, the increasing complexity of uncertainty suggests that the ability to predict the future is limited; hence, there is a need to shift from the conventional “predict-then-act” planning paradigm. This thesis presents an alternative framework to urban water investment planning, using a portfolio approach. A generalized risk-based framework for urban water supply-demand planning is proposed, and it is applied to Melbourne, Australia, to demonstrate its utility and usefulness. First of all, water shortage risk is clearly defined in two terms–frequency and severity of water shortages–of a defined planning horizon. Supply-side uncertainty is quantified based on probability distributions of precipitation and runoff to reservoirs. Demand-side uncertainty is modeled by scenarios with different combinations of population growth rate and per capita water usage. Next, the thesis presents an investment decision-making tool to identify cost-effective supply-demand portfolios that minimize water shortage severity while achieving a target level of reliable service. In addition to find the optimal portfolio composition, the model presents sequences of investments, indicating timing of implementation of each chosen measure. Using mixed integer programming, the decision-making tool yields Pareto efficient frontiers for different demand scenarios. The Pareto frontier exhibits trade-offs between cost of a water supply-demand strategy and water shortage risks facing a society in the long run. The trade-offs provide analytical insights on risk attitude towards water supply services, namely (i) what is the acceptable level of water shortage risk for a society, and (ii) how much are customers willing to pay to avoid such a risk. The results indicate that a portfolio which diversity risk of individual supply augmentation and conservation measures is robust when confronting a wide range of plausible climate and demand growth scenarios. Finally, recognizing important roles played by society and government in water-related investment decision-making process, the thesis discusses institutional barriers in adopting and implementing the proposed risk-based framework in practice. This thesis presents an alternative framework to quantitatively integrate risk in urban water resources management. Under this framework, the portfolio approach is an analytical tool for decision-makers to prioritize investments in supply augmentation infrastructure and implementation of demand management programs. It is the hope of the author that this work provides new insights and necessary tools to water sector professionals in urban water investment planning. The use of risk-based framework and portfolio approach is not limited to any specific city and could find many applications in urban areas where water scarcity and climate risk are pressing issues.
Engineering and Applied Sciences - Engineering Sciences

The chapters of this dissertation examine efficiency failures in three areas of applied microeconomics: experimental economics, public finance, and game theory. In each case, we look at ways to resolve these failures to promote the public good. The first chapter, “An Experimental Test of the Pigovian Hypothesis,” looks at two different policies designed to reduce congestion in a common-pool resource (CPR). We present an experiment with training and a simplified decision task and find that subject behavior converges to the Nash prediction over a number of periods. A Pigovian subsidy effectively moves subject behavior to the pre-subsidy social optimum. Finally, we find a significant but non-persistent effect of information provision in moving subjects toward the social optimum. The second chapter, “Apples to Apples to Oranges,” looks at efficiency and equity failures across states resulting from public expenditure. This chapter introduces an extension of the Representative Expenditure System that uses regression methods and both state and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level data, allowing for comparability of input costs, service requirements, and levels of need. The regression-based results are robust across state- and MSA-level formulations, although state-level approaches overestimate need for larger, less populous states. All regression-based results diverge from previous workload-based approaches. The third chapter, “Evading Nash Traps in Two-Player Simultaneous Games,” looks at efficiency failures in two-player simultaneous games. This chapter presents two new concepts: “détente” and “no-initiative,” in which players consider their own strategies and other-best-responses. We discuss their efficiency and descriptive properties across a set of simultaneous games.

The following doctoral thesis, sponsored by Autostrada del Brennero S.p.A. (an Italian highway concession company in charge of managing toll roads) consists on empirical essays at the crossroad between transport and regional economics. They focus on different aspects that directly involve motorways (i.e, safety, intermodality, and commuting dynamics) and they are aimed at providing further evidences that transport institutions and policy makers could take into account throughout their decision-making processes. The first chapter presents a research article that seeks to determine the impact of an average speed enforcement system in reducing highway accidents. Indeed, at the end of 2005, Autostrade per l'Italia (ASPI) and the Italian traffic police progressively deployed along the Italian tolled motorway network an average speed enforcement system, named Safety Tutor, able to determine the average speed of vehicles over a long section to encourage drivers to comply with speed limits and improve safety. To empirically test the extent to which Safety Tutor led to a reduction in both total and fatal accidents on Italian highways during the period of 2001-2017, we carried out a generalized difference-in-differences estimation using a unique panel dataset that exploits the heterogeneous accident data within all tolled motorway sectors in a quasi-experimental setting. To deal with the potential endogeneity of the non-random placement of Safety Tutor sites, we utilized an instrumental variable strategy by using the network of motorway sectors managed by ASPI and its controlled concessionaires from 2005 onwards (i.e., when the technology was available) as an instrument to predict Safety Tutor adoption. We found that a 10% increase in Safety Tutor coverage led to an average reduction in total accidents of 3.9%, whereas there is no evidence of a significant causal effect of Safety Tutor in reducing fatal accidents. The second chapter presents a research article that seeks to investigate the inter-modal competition between motorway and high-speed rail (HSR) services, as the extent to which HSR demand could be the result of a modal shift from motorways is a relevant issue in any cost-benefit analysis of HSR investments. Indeed, the development of HSR has had a notable impact on modal market shares on the routes on which its services have been implemented. To analyse whether the HSR expansion in Italy has led to a modal shift from motorway to HSR, we empirically test i) whether HSR openings adjacent to motorway sectors have reduced the total km travelled by light vehicles on these sectors during the period 2001-2017; and ii) whether this reduction has been persistent or even more evident after the opening of on-track competition between two HSR operators. To do so, we carried out a generalized difference-in-differences estimation, using a unique panel dataset that exploits the heterogeneous traffic data within all tolled motorway sectors in a quasi-experimental setting. Our findings reveal that neither HSR openings nor the opening of on-track competition led to a modal shift from motorway to HSR services, as the two transport modes are non-competing. Conversely, HSR expansion had a slightly positive impact on motorway traffic. The third chapter presents a data article in a “data in brief” format that describes a dataset on municipality-to-municipality commuting patterns in Italy over the 1991, 2001, and 2011 censuses aimed at investigating the role of transport infrastructures and the structural transformation of the economy on worker mobility. At this purpose, a core origin-destination dataset on the number of workers moving between municipalities, or within the same municipality, has been linked with further municipality covariates on jobs location, population, and the distances in meters and journey times in minutes between all municipalities. Even though these data are freely available online, they require some tedious work to organize. Therefore, this data article brings the necessary information together and makes the dataset available on request. The dataset offers applied researchers an alternative source of information to shed new lights on the changing shape of urban systems by analysing i) the impact of infrastructural endowment in providing better job accessibility, or ii) the connection between increasing commuting patterns and the structural transformation of the economy due to the tertiarization process from 1991 to 2011.

Orientador: Claudio Schuller Maciel
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T11:33:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Barbosa_RafaeldaSilva_M.pdf: 3139373 bytes, checksum: 7dcc1b0727f22489e24adb3724559411 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011
Resumo: Atualmente o território capixaba, mais precisamente a Região Metropolitana da Grande Vitória sofre grandes transformações no âmbito econômico e urbano. O primeiro ativado pelo setor externo de commodities e o segundo como resultado, de certa forma, da pujança econômica da região; engendrando no espaço consideráveis mudanças que por sua vez trazem novas e antigas questões. Uma delas refere-se à infraestrutura, uma variável de suma importância para o desenvolvimento seja econômico ou social de qualquer território. Pois, a quantidade e qualidade de infraestrutura acessível no espaço qualificam e condicionam o processo de desenvolvimento. Desse modo, as análises que versam sobre a infraestrutura envolvem diversas dimensões e setores, dentre as quais se destacam a produtiva e urbana. Diante disso, que o esforço do trabalho consiste em investigar a distribuição da infraestrutura urbana "básica" à luz do desenvolvimento econômico e social do território serrano, salientando a atuação do capital da construção civil na região. Assim sendo, a pergunta que norteia o estudo é: como uma região que produz riqueza a distribui em forma de bens coletivos? Com isto, proporciona-se uma leitura da desigualdade sócioespacial para a cidade da Serra numa concepção de serviços e equipamentos urbanos "básicos", como esgoto, pavimentação, transporte público, coleta de lixo e iluminação publica
Abstract: Currently the capixaba territory, specifically the Metropolitan Region of Vitória, undergoes major transformations in the economic and urban. The first activated by the external sector of commodities and the second result, in a sense, the boom in the region, generating considerable changes in space which in turn bring new and old questions. One refers to the infrastructure, a variable of paramount importance for the economic or social development of any territory. Because the quantity and quality of infrastructure available in space qualifies and requirement the development process. Thus, the analysis that deal with the infrastructure involve sectors and many dimensions, among which stand out, the production and urban. Front of this, the work aims to investigate the distribution of "basic" urban infrastructure under the light of economic and social development of serrano territory, stressing the role of capital construction in the region. Therefore the question that guides the study is: how a region that produces wealth distribute it in the form of collective goods? With this, it gives a reading of sociospatial inequality for the Serra's town in a conception of services and "basic" urban equipments as sewer, sidewalks, public transportation, garbage collection and street lighting
Mestrado
Desenvolvimento Economico, Espaço e Meio Ambiente
Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

This dissertation investigates whether higher levels of “governmental fragmentation” in metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) leads to worse environmental outcomes. Fragmentation refers to the number of local governments in a given region or MSA as defined by the census. This research contributes to two bodies of literature, that of environmental federalism and that of urban growth and local government form. In the area of environmental federalism this dissertation extends the collective action model to include local governments. An empirical framework is developed that includes cross-sectional and panel data. In the urban growth and local government form literature, this dissertation comprehensively tests many existing measures of local government fragmentation within an environmental policy framework. It also modifies and extends some of the fragmentation variables. The results suggest that local government fragmentation does hinder MSAs from attaining the ozone standard. This dissertation extends the literature by examining the effect that local government fragmentation has on regional environmental quality. Six local government structure variables, jurisdiction count, special district dominance, central city dominance, county primacy, central city growth, and metropolitan power diffusion index are comprehensively tested to determine which might affect regional environmental quality. In addition, this research extends the use of the computationally complex measure of metropolitan power diffusion index to include additional local government expenditures as well as additional years of panel data. Two empirical estimation strategies were implemented, a cross-sectional approach and a panel data approach. The cross-sectional approach estimates the effects that long-term changes in local government structure have on attaining the ozone standard by measuring differences across MSAs. The panel data model’s primary purpose was that of a robustness check on the cross-sectional results. Three of the six tested fragmentation variables were found to have statistically significant effects on MSA attainment of the ozone standard in the cross-sectional model. Higher levels of metropolitan power diffusion index and jurisdiction count were found to hinder attainment of the ozone standard, while greater values of central city growth aided in reaching the attainment standard. Generally, the panel data results’ supported the results from the cross-sectional models. In addition, the panel model resolved some important estimation issues. Metropolitan power diffusion index was found to be correlated with unobservables in the random effects model, indicating that the cross-sectional results for metropolitan power diffusion index may be biased as well. This was not an issue for the variable jurisdiction count. Metropolitan power diffusion index and jurisdiction count are highly correlated with each other and this relationship was used to estimate a reasonable range for the effect metropolitan power diffusion index might have on the attainment of the ozone standard.

This study utilized geographic information systems (GIS) software to identify and map vacant parcels of land where the establishment of urban market gardens and small-scale farms would most likely be viable, and then estimated potential crop yields and gross sales based on available land resources. Of the 100,618 parcels (62,098 acres) within the study area, 14 percent (4,603 parcels, 8,612 acres) were water-metered, vacant, and met the study's minimum suitability requirements. Based on average yields for fourteen regionally appropriate crops and local produce prices for organic goods in 2012, gross yields and sales were calculated. The findings suggest that urban growers in the Reno-Sparks-Washoe County study area could generate between $88,000 and $272,000 per acre, a range based on conventional and biointensive crop management methods, respectively. If 10 percent (861 acres) of all suitable vacant lands were cultivated, an estimated $76 million to $234 million could be generated through sales of an estimated yield of 29 to 86 million pounds of produce.

These figures were based on the assumptions that land would be at least 60 percent cultivated; that season extension infrastructure such as row covers, polyethylene-film covered hoop-house structures, or traditional greenhouses would be utilized to ensure three full growing seasons if necessary; and that 60 percent of all produce would be sold directly to consumers at organic retail prices. Costs of labor, establishment, and production were not considered due to extreme variability of site requirements and growing methods. The results highlight the importance of urban agriculture to our community's economy and food security, and its needs for greater public awareness and political and programmatic support.

O objetivo deste estudo é compreender se certas características espaciais influenciam o desempenho exportador das firmas. A análise é feita com dados de dezenove setores exportadores dos municípios do Estado de São Paulo, que compõem a maior Aglomeração Industrial Exportadora do país. Os resultados obtidos, com o Modelo de Determinantes das Exportações, confirmam a hipótese que fatores espaciais são relevantes para as exportações das firmas. Indo ao encontro de uma das previsões do Modelo de Krugman-Livas, a especialização econômica aparece como uma dos principais determinantes das vendas para outros países. Os efeitos das economias de aglomeração foram significantes para a maioria dos setores estudados. Tais resultados evidenciaram que as economias de urbanização, que já foram apontadas em diversos estudos como importantes para o crescimento das cidades, parecem também ser relevantes para as firmas que exportam. Notou-se ainda que transbordamentos espaciais dos diversos setores levam a efeitos representativos para as exportações. Além disso, a acessibilidade a mercados afeta os setores de maneira diferenciada.
The aim of this study is to understand if spatial aspects influence firms export performance. The analysis is made with data from nineteen exporting sectors of the state of São Paulo, which constitute the largest industrial export agglomeration of the country. The results obtained through the Export Determinants Model confirm the hypothesis that spatial aspects are relevant for firms exports. As it appears in Krugman-Livas Model, economic specialization seems to be a major determinant of sales to other countries. Agglomeration economies effects were significant for almost all sectors, showing that urbanization economies, which have already been identified in various studies as important for the growth of cities, also seem to be relevant to firms which export. It was also observed that spillover effects into the sectors are representative for exports. Furthermore, access to markets affects sectors in a different way.

With the rise of the importance of air transportation in the 21st centuries, the role of economics in airport planning and decision-making has become more important to the urban structure and land value around it. The relationship between the airport and land value in urban areas has attracted more attention from academic researchers. However, there has been little research on the factors that affect the prices of land relatively to the airport location.

Using New Bangkok International Airport (Suvarnabhumi International Airport) as a case study, this dissertation applied Alonso's bid rent model explaining the relationship between an airport and its distribution to the urban land values. In addition, it developed a hedonic pricing model to determine the influential factors that reflect on the prices of land over four time periods of airport development (before airport development, after the airport site proposed, during airport construction, and after the opening of the airport).

The statistical analysis results confirm that Alonso's model can be used to explain the impact of the new airport only for the northeast quadrant, while proximity to the airport showed the inverse relationship with the land value of all six types of land use activities through four periods of time. In addition, the empirical results of the hedonic model confirm that the presence of the airport consistently affected land value for all types of land use activities for three quadrants (northwest, northeast, and southwest). The distance to the Bangkok CBD has a strong relationship to the land values through four time periods for the northwest quadrant. Also, the distance to transportation networks, such as main streets and Bang-Na Trad highway, became important factors affecting urban land value for all four quadrants through four periods of time.

The findings of this dissertation are not only useful for an understanding the impacts of the airport on urban land value in Thailand, but also valuable to regional and urban development for real estate developers, policy makers, and the Thai government to provide an appropriate plan for future developments in the airport area. Furthermore, the analytical methods and the empirical results of this dissertation can be applied to estimate the impacts of other public projects, such as subway stations, airport-link terminal, sport stadium, and marinas, on the urban land value.

Over the past 25 years, long-term trends in population and employment change for the US have been dramatically altered. At the regional level, areas like the Rocky Mountain West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, and WY) have seen the century-long decline in nonmetropolitan population reversed to some degree. Scholars from across the US have proposed several broad theories to explain these shifts; however, researchers based in the RMW have argued that any general theory of growth and development must be adapted to take into account the region's unique geography and history. For example, population and employment change in RMW has been more volatile and extreme due to the region's reliance on extractive industries. The purpose of this dissertation is to present preliminary findings of an investigation of population and employment change in the RMW in general, and to test the claims of regional researchers on the processes behind these changes. The ideas of these researchers are embodied in the quality-of-life model, which claims that changing residential preferences, demographic changes, and economic restructuring will benefit areas like the nonmetropolitan RMW, an area rich in amenities. Using a wide variety of tools ranging from descriptive statistics, to classification techniques, to multivariate regression models, this research measures how factors theorized to be associated with growth have increased (decreased) in importance over the 25 year span of this study. The results show that regionally-based ideas on growth have a place in helping scholars understand regional growth processes in a more reliable manner. More importantly, there is significant support for the quality-of-life model, especially the role of service industries and environmental amenities in driving regional growth. Answers to these questions will help scholars understand the extent to which national events are being restructured in regional contexts. Additionally, until these ideas are fully tested and shown to explain some of the events and underlying processes driving population and employment growth in the RMW, long-term policies designed to help plan for the continued growth of the region may be misguided and wasteful.

Swedish municipalities have very different age structures. Migration from rural to urban areas has led to a polarisation of Swedish regions, where urban centres have an inflow of young and skilled workers while rural regions are ageing and falling behind economically. This thesis examines what effect population ageing has on output of Swedish municipalities and how that effect differs between urban and rural municipalities. By classifying all 290 municipalities as either rural or urban and dividing the population of each municipality into six age cohorts, a clear negative relation is found between the share of people aged 65 to 79 and gross regional product per capita in both types of municipalities. Surprisingly, this negative relation is not found for the share of people above 80. This group is positively related to output in urban municipalities, but not in rural ones. Overall, population ageing seems to be negative for economic growth in both urban and rural municipalities.

Orientador: Daniel Joseph Hogan
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
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Resumo: Algumas transformações vivenciadas no espaço urbano brasileiro nas últimas décadas vêm reforçando um padrão de urbanização disperso e fragmentado e, não obstante, mais integrado. Essas mudanças na estrutura urbana vêm implicando em novidades sobre a mobilidade espacial da população onde ganham destaque os deslocamentos pendulares. A partir dessas transformações na estrutura urbana dos principais aglomerados do país, o objetivo desta dissertação é estabelecer um quadro referencial de análise sobre os deslocamentos pendulares, apontando sua relação com os processos sócioespaciais que atuam na produção e reprodução social do espaço urbano no Brasil, mais precisamente, aqueles processos que condicionam a (re)localização de residências e postos de trabalho.Um compêndio da bibliografia especializada em estudos urbanos permite apontar quatro processos sócioespaciais que influem na estrutura urbana e que estariam ligados às causas dos deslocamentos pendulares: os processos de centralização e de desconcentração produtiva e os de periferização e suburbanização (ligados, respectivamente, a determinados padrões de localização espacial de atividades econômicas e da população). Ao manter e reforçar certo descompasso espacial entre residências e postos de trabalho, esses processos resumem os elementos que vão constituir a estrutura de incentivos/constrangimentos (CUNHA, 1994) que condicionam de maneira mais próxima os deslocamentos pendulares ¿ tanto em termos de seu padrão espacial quanto do perfil socioeconômico dos comutadores que realizam esses deslocamentos. Com dados censitários e da pesquisa Origem-Destino esta dissertação ilustra empiricamente como, a partir da década de 70, aqueles processos sócioespaciais se deram na Região Metropolitana de Campinas e apresenta o padrão espacial e qualitativo dos fluxos pendulares dessa região. Ao aprofundar essas análises sobre três municípios da RM (Hortolândia, Vinhedo e Campinas), a possibilidade de considerar algumas de suas particularidades históricas na dinâmica regional permitiu compreender com mais clareza, em situações distintas da pendularidade, a predominância de diferentes condicionantes de seus fluxos
Abstract: Recent changes in Brazil¿s urban agglomerations have promoted a more dispersed and fragmented ¿ but at the same time, more integrated ¿ urban pattern. Along with these changes, some specific types of population spatial mobility are stressed, such as commuting. This study aims to explore a new theoretical framework for the analysis of commuting, with attention to its relations with social processes which impact urban structure by affecting residence and job locations in urban space. These processes synthesize the elements of the structure of opportunities/constraints which affect commuting patterns and commuters¿ socioeconomic characteristics. Using mainly Brazilian census data, this study illustrates empirically these ongoing processes over the last four decades in the metropolitan area of Campinas, presenting spatial and qualitative patterns with special attention to three specific cities (Hortolândia, Vinhedo e Campinas). The possibility of considering some of these cities¿ historical particularities in regional dynamics leads us to a clearer understanding of the predominance of various commuting constraints on different situations
Mestrado
Demografia
Mestre em Demografia

The local food movement in the Portland Metro Region of Oregon is as prevalent as anywhere in the Country. To a large degree this is driven by the Portland Metro area food culture and the diverse agricultural landscape present in the Willamette Valley and throughout the State. Portlanders demand local food and thus far the rural periphery has been able to provide it; driving a new food economy that has economic implications throughout the region. As this regional food economy emerges much attention has been focused on harnessing its power for economic development perpetuated by the belief that there exists an opportunity to foster a cluster of economic activity pertaining to the production, processing, distribution and sale of regional foods that might generate economic opportunities throughout the value chain. The research presented here constitutes an attempt to characterize the local and regional food system that currently exists in the Portland Metro Region and to bring to light the opportunities present at the regional scale that link the agricultural periphery to the urban core. I present two different definitions of local and regional food systems and show how these different conceptions have very different implications for economic development. Once defined, I test for differences between local and regional food systems and the export-oriented, agro-food sector by analyzing aspects of geographic space and processes of knowledge accumulation and innovation in the context of aspects of regional economic development such as agglomeration economies, knowledge spillovers, business life cycle and industrial location. My analysis showed that there are significant differences between local and regional food systems and the export-oriented agro-food industry specific to supply chains, actors and products of the different systems. Furthermore, through spatial analysis, I found that there are differences in terms of the spatial structure and distribution between producers who participate in the different systems. Local and regional producers tend to cluster closer together at smaller scales, are smaller in size and are found to be closer to the urban core. Through a qualitative inquiry I found that this clustering facilitates forces of agglomeration economies specific to food producers who participate in local and regional supply chains, particularly non-pecuniary effects of knowledge accumulation. This underlying structure has significant effects on economic outcomes and as such has implications in terms of regional economic development when local and regional food systems are considered in terms of the city-region.

Ideas developed by regional economists have potential applications within the urban planning field. One potential application is toward conserving farmland, and within this thesis this topic is examined for the study area of Utah County, Utah. Using assessor data, a land value map is created and further used to develop a regional economic model and spatial models that were analyzed for patterns of land use change. Findings show that representing land value as continuous surface maps is a useful approach. The maps reveal that Utah County has densified as its population increased while farmland loss still occurred in agriculturally-important areas. Vulnerable areas were identified by examining the value of changed lands. Change mapping shows that macro-level variables affect local land values and subsequent development patterns. While limitations exist, the conclusion was drawn that this data is useful in connecting land value to location, examining change over time, and understanding how individuals’ priorities (as represented through property values) may conflict with (and potentially solve) collective goals.

This dissertation attempts to provide a comprehensive examination on the non-market valuation of the effect of open space amenities and local public infrastructure on the value of urban land and housing with both spatial heterogeneity and project heterogeneity. The demand for raw land is a derived demand for housing built on it. Therefore, we need to examine the land market and the housing market together. On the one hand, we estimate the value of urban land in a market that does not satisfy the usual assumptions of a competitive market structure as well as incentive incompatibility issues for transaction participants, with an application to a Chinese regional wholesale land market. These two violations to the traditional hedonic theory also generate two separate valuations on land with differentiated characteristics. On the other hand, we utilize the relative plane coordinates system, the three-dimensional distances, as well as the aggregate weight matrix, to implement the spatial hedonic estimation on the high-rise residential buildings in the same regional housing retail market in China. After these two steps, this dissertation, therefore, focuses on the profit maximization behavior of the property developer, which is the key role to link the factor market (i.e., the land market) and the commodity market (i.e., the housing market) together. Two methods are then employed to implement the hypothesis test on the hedonic price estimation including both inputs and outputs. First, a set of partial derivatives of the profit function with respect to various characteristics gives us the relationship between the marginal valuations in the land market and in the housing market. Second, we introduce a joint estimation approach that we call the spatial full information maximum likelihood (SFIML), which considers the land market, the housing market, and the property developer's profit maximization behavior all together in the estimation. Finally, we conduct a hypothesis test in both of these two scenarios to examine the validity of our linked markets assumption on the hedonic price estimation.

The intention of this study is to analyze the economic impact of redeveloped Major League Baseball stadiums opened between 1991 and 2004. Using two empirical models, including an event study, this impact analysis captures the economic conditions of the cities during the opening year of the stadium, as well as the prior conditions leading up to the opening of the stadium, along with any lingering effects or gradual changes in conditions. The impact was measured in relation to the Metropolitan Statistical Areas corresponding to the 18 ballparks included, specifically looking at the impact on employment rates and per capita personal income. The common assumption is that stadium redevelopment will provide a positive impact on the surrounding community, initiating revitalization of urban neighborhoods as well as increasing job opportunities, income levels, and city revenues. While previous research on the effects of stadium development have mostly concluded that there is no positive or significant quantitative impact resulting from stadiums, this study shows that the boom of ballpark redevelopment may actually have positive effects, contrasting this prior research. With the results showing small, yet positive effects, the recent boom period may actually have been so far effective in initiating new development and revitalized culture in urban areas, and will therefore be useful in further developing future plans for modernizing and redeveloping baseball stadiums.

Large corporations largely control food production and distribution in the global food system and have generated a desire for locally produced food. Although small independent producers still contribute to regional food systems, there is little understanding about how they distribute and market their products. This thesis uses both semistructured interviews to investigate the distribution practices of urban, family, and regional producers in the New Orleans region and discourse analysis to disclose how localist discourse shapes producers marketing practices. The discourse analysis discovered that the web presence of local New Orleans restaurants, farmers, and Crescent City Farmers Market targeted concepts that reflect localist beliefs and values. It was also established that small producers respond to consumer demands, but still have the power to shape the regional food system through negotiating informal contracts and striving to enter into the niche market.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004.
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The following Market Analysis is an analysis of the Franklin Boulevard Redevelopment Project Area. The analysis is divided into the following four sections: ♦ Planning Context ♦ Real Estate Market Conditions ♦ Emerging Market Opportunities & Case Studies ♦ Conclusion The report serves as an opportunity to aide stakeholders of the Franklin Boulevard Redevelopment Project Area. Stakeholders include residents, business owners, the City of Sacramento, County of Sacramento, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA), and the North Franklin District Business Association (NFDBA). The stakeholders are continually searching for data and creative examples of how to transform the area into a premier “urban” destination in the Sacramento Region.

After a 100-year history, traditional zoning practices are being challenged as a contributing factor in a number of social, heath and economic problems facing cities in the United States. In this context, form based codes have emerged as a possible alternative way for cities to guide development. Growing out of the New Urbanist movement, form based codes frequently mix uses, allow for a greater variety of housing types and encourage development that is both denser and more compact. Despite an established literature which links land-use regulations, and zoning in particular, to fiscal outcomes, the impacts that form based codes have on public finance in the growing number of cities which have adopted them has yet to be fully investigated. The goal of this research is to examine if and how form based codes alter property tax and sales tax generation in the cities that adopt them. To examine the relationship between form based codes and public finance a series of two multivariate regression analyses were conducted using historic property and sales tax data. The first regression analysis was performed using the full list of 122 cities which have adopted form based standards from between 1984 and 2009. In an attempt to limit the diversity of sample cities and improve the ability to generalize results a second regression analysis was performed using a smaller list of 47 cities with populations between 50,000 and 200,000 thousand that had adopted form based standards between 1984 and 2009. The results of the first analysis established that a statistically significant positive relationship existed between the presence of form based standards which were implemented citywide and observed property tax revenue both in total and on a per capita basis. Similarly, a statistically significant positive relationship between the presence of form based standards implemented at the neighborhood level and total property tax revenue was observed. No significant relationship was found between the presence of neighborhood level standards and per capita property tax revenue. Further no significant relationship was found between form based standards and sales tax revenue. In general, these findings support the theory that form based codes and the development they allow, does alter the amount of property tax a city collects, but does not support the theory that form based codes affect sales tax revenues by facilitating the development of a more conducive urban, walkable environment or for any other reason. The results of the second regression analysis using data from cities with populations between 50,000 and 200,000 showed a significant positive relationship between the presences of citywide form based standards and total property tax revenue and per capita property tax revenue. Analysis of sales tax data showed a positive relationship between total sales tax revenue and the presence of form based standards at the neighborhood level. No other significant relationship between form based standards and sales tax revenue was observed. Similar, to analysis of all cities, the results for cities with population of 50,000 to 200,000 support the theory that form based codes and the development they allow does alter the amount of property tax a city collects, and that form based codes do not affect sales tax revenues except in the case of codes adopted at the neighborhood level, where a generally positive relationship was identified at the 10% confidence interval. Following this multivariate regression analysis, a case study of Saratoga Springs, New York was completed. Located in the far reaches of the Albany Metropolitan Area, Saratoga Springs developed as a popular tourist destination in the mid 1800’s. After experiencing economic decline in line with that of its peer cities in the mid to late 20th century, Saratoga Springs has experience a boom and now boast some of the highest home values in Upstate New York. In 2003 the city was one of the first in country to adopt form based standards, which have guided a significant amount of development in the city’s historic downtown as the city re-emerged as a popular tourist destination. Since the adoption of form based standards in Saratoga Springs both property tax and sales tax receipts have doubled.

This paper explores two potential land use planning strategies that can be used to preserve and enhance the economic viability of agricultural operations surrounded by suburban development in Santa Barbara County’s Eastern Goleta Valley: buffers between agriculture and other land uses, and agritourism. In the case of buffers, academic literature is examined to determine how effective buffers are at various tasks (filtering runoff, mitigating dust and wind, providing habitat, etc.) and how to construct buffers to maximize their effectiveness. Land use plans and codes from several California jurisdictions are studied to see how buffers are put to use. Academic literature is then reviewed to discover the benefits and potential drawbacks of agritourism to agricultural operations and the larger area. The zoning codes from the top five agritourism counties in California are evaluated to see how effective they are at facilitating five common agritourism uses; these best practices are then compared to the current zoning in Santa Barbara County. This paper concludes by summarizing the applicability of the literature and case studies to Eastern Goleta Valley, and proposes a new zoning designation and other policies to help maintain the urban agriculture operations. This new zoning designation includes a 30-foot minimum width for buffers and a three-tier categorization of land uses capable of promoting agritourism.

The year 1994 marked the dawn of the new democratic South Africa, bringing its own set of challenges to the country. Currently urban areas cover only one and a half percent of South Africa’s surface area. However, sixty one percent of South Africans live in urban areas. Furthermore, the average growth rate for urban areas has been consistently higher than the population growth rate during the period from 1998 to 2008. This resulted in larger towns and cities, growing at the expense of rural areas, with metropolitan areas experiencing the highest influx, followed by secondary cities. However, urban areas consume more water, food, energy, and durable goods, and have an impact far beyond the urban boundaries. This directly relates to urban decline. The rapid influx of people into urban areas that are already overcrowded with large service delivery backlogs, has led to the formation of informal settlements in exposed locations. Many of the informal dwellings in South Africa are subjected to environmental factors. The absence of basic services in overcrowded areas is linked to negative health outcomes and enhanced environmental degradation. This study is a critical review of a phenomenon named urban resilience. The report seeks to highlight the current status in cities and the transformation that cities need to undergo to enable them to become the cities of tomorrow. Indeed, “sustainable future cities and human settlements begin today”. The paper raises arguments on urban resilience by different theorists, philosophers, academics and scholars. The study proceeds to unpack the urban resilience determinants. Furthermore, the challenges cites will experience in responding to rapid urbanisation and their denial attitude to informal settlement and environmental degradation, which include how cities respond to climate change, are under investigation . The purpose of the study is to share the theoretical framework relative to the urban resilience determinants, with the intention to solicit criticism on gaps and blind spots. This is done with specific reference to Buffalo City Municipality. This study aims to contribute to the goals of municipalities by improving understanding of the drivers of urban resilience. This will, in turn, enable a city system to withstand and recover quickly from multiple and diverse shocks and stresses, and improve its performance over time. However, this study was conducted within a qualitative paradigm. The study followed a non-probability sampling technique. Categories of data sources were identified based on their probability to hold information that is crucial to the study. For each category, this study followed a 50 + 1 rule for sampling size when the population of the data sources were identified and access gained. he statistical software (SPSS) supported by a qualified statistician was used to analyse data qualitatively in attempt to answer the research question.

A dissertação aborda as dimensões econômica e morfológica da organização espacial da atividade industrial na Região Metropolitana de Porto Alegre - RMPA, propondo interfaces entre a Ciência Econômica e o Planejamento Urbano e Regional. O objetivo da pesquisa consiste em identificar se e como as propriedades morfológicas das redes de circulação urbana e rodoviária são capazes de informar tendências em processos de organização espacial da atividade industrial em ambientes urbanos. Neste sentido, foi realizado um estudo de caso multidimensional e multiescalar a partir de cinco recortes espaciais de cinco municípios da RMPA – Alvorada, Cachoeirinha, Gravataí, Porto Alegre e Viamão – e seus complexos industriais, áreas contínuas de zoneamento funcional destinados à indústria. A hipótese é de que os potenciais de movimento e as probabilidades de fluxo, depreendidas por medidas de centralidade morfológicas e espaciais captam padrões locacionais e de organização espacial das atividades industriais. Isto é verificado a partir da correlação geoestatística entre análises configuracionais da rede de circulação urbana, apoiadas nas concepções teórico-metodológicas da sintaxe espacial, e as análises econômico-locacionais, da localização das estruturas industriais, fundamentadas nas teorias econômicas. Os resultados dispostos permitiram concluir que existem correlações estatísticas significativas entre a lógica de organização espacial da indústria em áreas urbanas e as propriedades morfológicas multiescalares da configuração espacial da rede de circulação urbana, indicando que hierarquias de centralidade morfológica, informando potenciais de movimento e probabilidades de fluxo na rede urbana de circulação, captam tendências do processo de organização produtiva.
Dissertation addresses the economical and morphological dimensions of industrial activities spatial organization in the Porto Alegre’s Metropolitan Region – PAMR, proposing interfaces between Economic Science and Urban and Regional Planning. The research objective is to describe and analyse if and how the morphological properties of road and circulation urban networks are able to inform trends about the industrial activities spatial organization processes in urban areas. The empirical study multidimensional and multiscalar analyses encompasses PMAR’s five municipalities – Alvorada, Cachoeirinha, Gravataí, Porto Alegre and Viamão and their industrial complexes, continuous industrial-dedicated functional zones. The hypothesis is that movement potentials and flow probabilities informed by centralities´ hierarchies correlate to industry locational patterns and spatial organization. This is verified applying geostatistical correlations between road circulation networks spatial configuration measures, based on space syntax methodology; and locational analyses of industrial structures placement, based on economic theories. Results makes it possible to conclude that there are significant statistical correlations between industrial spatial organization logics in urban areas and multiscalar centrality measures for road circulation networks, indicating that the urban centralities hierarchies – and the network morphological properties – capture trends about this process.

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This reserch focuses on analyzing the relation among the deforestation, the economic growth and the interaction of the cities and micro regions Alto Teles Pires e Sinop, located in the state of Mato Grosso, to the economic development, between the years of 1988 and 2010. This approach has been realized by using as methodology, primarily, the obtaining of the deforested and forested areas in the cities and micro regions studied during this period, every two years, by satellite and geo-processing images. After, the obtaining and organization of the official source data were made followed by the planning and calculations of the attractiveness and outsourcing of them. At this stage, the linearization was performed to estimate the population in years without any base on official data, followed by the deflation, the log transformation and the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) linearization, and the Added Value of Agriculture and Husbandry Sector, industry and service industry. Thereafter the Outsourcing Index (IT), the Interaction Index of a Space Point (IG) and the Attractiveness Index for the Consumer Market Potential (IA). The results have shown that the micro regions of Alto Teles Pires and Sinop had different conducts each, in view of their area locations (Cerrado and Amazon), which implied a distinct economic growth over the period analyzed. In the first decade (1988-1998), also the first decade of the civilian government, the Alto Peres Micro region had already shown a stronger relation and deforestation degree than the Sinop Micro region. In the second period (2000-2010), became clear that the growth of the commercial inter-relation and the service industry in the cities of the Sinop Micro region and the reinforcement of cities in the biome Cerrado in which the agro-industrial sector was implemented in the territory.
O objetivo desta pesquisa foi analisar a relação entre o desflorestamento, o crescimento econômico e a interação dos municípios e das microrregiões Alto Teles Pires e Sinop, do estado do Mato Grosso, entre os anos de 1988 a 2010. Foi utilizada como metodologia, a obtenção das áreas de desmate e de floresta dos municípios das microrregiões estudadas no período, em intervalo bianual, por meio de imagens de satélites e de geoprocessamento. Após, foi feita a obtenção e estruturação dos dados de fontes oficiais, seguido do ordenamento e cálculos de atratividade e terciarização dos mesmos. Nessa etapa foi realizada a linearização para estimar a população em anos sem dados oficiais, seguido da deflação, da logaritmização e da linearização do PIB e do Valor Adicionado dos setores agropecuário, industrial e de serviços. Após, foram calculados os Índice de Terciarização (IT), o Índice de Interação de um Ponto no Espaço (IG) e o Índice de Atratividade pelo Potencial do Mercado Consumidor (IA). Os resultados mostraram que as microrregiões Alto Teles Pires e Sinop se comportaram de formas diferenciadas entre si, em vista da localização de suas áreas (Cerrado e Amazônia), o que implicou em um crescimento econômico distinto ao longo do período estudado. Na primeira década (1988 a 1998), também esta a primeira década do governo civil, a Microrregião Alto Teles Pires já mostrava um grau de relações e de desmatamento mais acentuada que na Microrregião Sinop. No segundo período (2000 a 2010), ficou nítido o aumento da inter-relação comercial e do setor de serviços nos municípios da Microrregião Sinop e o fortalecimento de municípios no bioma Cerrado que tiveram o setor agroindustrial implantados no território.

The transport and urban economics literature applies different labor supply approaches when studying economic or planning instruments. Some studies assume that working hours are endogenous while the number of workdays is given, whereas others model only decisions on workdays. Unfortunately, empirical evidence does hardly exist on account of missing data. Against this background, we provide an assessment of whether general effects of transport policies are robust against the modeling of leisure demand and labor supply. We introduce different labor supply approaches into a spatial general equilibrium model and discuss how they affect the welfare implication of congestion policies. We, then, perform simulations and find that in many cases the choice of labor supply modeling not only affects the magnitude of the policy impact but also its direction. While planning instruments are suggested to be quite robust to different labor supply approaches, the way of modeling labor supply may crucially affect the overall welfare implications of economic instruments such as congestion tolls. Based on these findings it becomes clear which labor supply approach is the most appropriate given specific conditions. Our study also emphasizes the need for better micro labor market data that also feature days of sickness, overtime work used to reduce workdays, the actual number of leave days, part-time work, days with telecommuting etc.

California is headed into its fifth consecutive year of drought, and climate change is expected to bring more frequent and severe droughts to the state. The state’s water supply is susceptible to drought as seen from the effects of the current dry period. Besides the clear impacts of drought, there are less obvious environmental, economic, and social costs, such as land subsidence from groundwater overdraft, and the consequences of urban tree and green space loss. As a uniquely climate-independent source, desalinated water can stabilize California’s water supply and lessen some of these drought-related impacts. Although seawater desalination is touted as the most costly and energy-intensive method for augmenting water supply, if implemented in a feasible manner, the technology provides a range of positive benefits for drought-prone California in the long term. This thesis analyzes the economic and environmental costs of using desalination to mitigate the effects of drought in California. The thesis explores both Australian and Californian desalination facilities as case studies for evaluating the benefits and impacts of using different methods of desalination, in an effort to determine which method would be the most beneficial for securing California’s water supply. It concludes that lower-capacity, flexible desalination facilities would be useful along California’s coast, under some conditions. By generating a supply of desalinated water for coastal communities, more water from the state and federal water projects could be redirected to agricultural regions and inland communities that suffer the most from dry spells, and thereby lessen a number of drought-related environmental, economic, and social consequences.

While environmental and economic sustainability have been driving factors in the movement towards a more resilient built environment, social sustainability is a factor that has received significantly less attention over the years. Federal support for low-income housing has fallen drastically, and the deficit of available, adequate, affordable homes continues to grow. In this thesis, I explore one way that architects can design affordable housing that is intrinsically sustainable. In the past, subsidized low-income housing has been built as if to provide a short-term solution—as if poverty and lack of affordable housing is a short-term problem. However, I argue that adaptable architecture is essential for the design of affordable housing that is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. Further, architects must balance affordability, durability, and adaptability to design sustainable solutions that are resistant to obsolescence. I conclude by applying principles and processes of adaptability in the design of Apto Ontario, an adaptable affordable housing development in the low-income historic downtown of Ontario, California (Greater Los Angeles). Along a new Bus Rapid Transit corridor, Apto Ontario would create a diverse, resilient, socially sustainable community in an area threatened by the rise of housing costs.

Bicycling is a method of tourism transportation that is healthy, non-invasive, environmentally responsible, and economically sustainable. It allows freedom, mobility, and sightseeing potential that is not made possible by other modes of transit. Thousands of bicycle tourists travel from all over the globe annually to explore California on touring bikes via established cycling routes and robust determination. Thousands of additional domestic and international visitors take weekend trips, plan family vacations, travel for business, or tour California from abroad, many of whom are excellent candidates for local and regional bicycle touring at a more gentle intensity level. The increasing popularity and prominence of bicycle tourism, among both domestic and international travelers, carries great potential for economic benefit to local communities. Rural and agricultural communities can particularly benefit from bicycle tourism, as these communities do not normally experience the benefits of tourism as significantly as their urban, coastal or mountainous neighbors. Tourism that is developed in accordance with the size, scale, constraints and character of a particular community can have a beneficial effect on the economics and industry of the area. Infrastructure projects to this effect, such as development of a town or regional trail system, wayfinding features, or other resources come with benefits for visitors and locals in the form of recreation, public health, mobility, and access to food, drink, amenities, scenic areas, jobs and commerce. Trails may further improve the economy of the local housing market, as proximity to trails has a positive effect on housing values. Incorporation of agricultural destinations into local tourism planning creates a draw for visitors and can become a mutually beneficial relationship – contributing to the economic stability of the agriculture industry, preserving local farm lands, increasing tourism revenue and educating the public on the importance of local farming. Through careful planning of the touristic components of the destination, rural communities can achieve multifaceted economic benefits of diverse and versatile tourism amenities.