Modeling In Urban And Regional Economics

This title provides a comprehensive, critical coverage of the progress and development of mathematical modelling within urban and regional economics over four decades.

This title provides a comprehensive, critical coverage of the progress and development of mathematical modelling within urban and regional economics over four decades.

Thorough and authoritative, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with a sound approach to analyzing the economic progress of a region or urban area. The textbook is divided into four sections for ease of reference. The first section, Market Areas and Firm Location Analysis introduces spatial economics and location theory, while the next section, Regional Growth and Development analyzes regional growth and development models and policy. Introducing the foundations of urban economics, Urban Land Use and Urban Form examines land rent, land use patterns, and the effects of attempts to control land uses. The final section, Urban Problems and Policy, investigates local public finance and introduces the policy analysis involved in countering urban problems. Addressing these topics from the perspectives of how they affect the population at large and how they become established within public policy, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with an essential foundation not only to understand but also to contemplate the dynamics of varying economic factors as they relate to an area's growth.

Spatial fixity is one of the characteristics that distinguishes housing from most other goods and services in the economy. In general, housing cannot be moved from one part of the country to another in response to shortages or excesses in particular areas. The modelling of housing markets and the interlinkages between markets at different spatial levels - international, national, regional and urban - are the main themes of this book. A second major theme is disaggregation, not only in terms of space, but also between households. The book argues that aggregate time-series models of housing markets of the type widely used in Britain and also in other countries in the past have become less relevant in a world of increasing income dispersion. Typically, aggregate relationships will break down, except under special conditions. We can no longer assume that traditional location or tenure patterns, for example, will continue in the future. The book has four main components. First, it discusses trends in housing markets both internationally and within nations. Second, the book develops theoretical housing models at each spatial scale, starting with national models, moving down to the regional level and, then, to urban models. Third, the book provides empirical estimates of the models and, finally, the models are used for policy analysis. Analysis ranges over a wide variety of topics, including explanations for differing international house price trends, the causes of housing cycles, the role of credit markets, regional housing market interactions and the role of housing in urban/suburban population drift.

Urban models can be divided into explanatory or policy-oriented classifications. Explanatory models are usually systematic attempts at explaining urban form; operational models, on the other hand, rely on either social physics or behavior principles. Explanatory models focus on the tradeoffs between the cost of the site itself and the costs of travel, the analytic problems caused by the unique quality of each location, the effects of transport congestion on city form, and the consequences of welfare emphasis on equity. The social physics form of operational models tries to replicate statistical regularities observed in the activities of people within a city. Economic models based on behavioral principles are the easiest to understand because their structure is drawn from behavioral relations derived from behavioral analysis. The characteristics of operational and explanatory models overlap. Two operational and two explanatory models are presented as exemplary techniques for modeling urban areas in developing countries. Useful explanatory models are likely to require large sets of disaggregated data in order to provide the building blocks for the operational models.

This contributed volume collects cutting-edge research in Geographic Information Science & Technologies, Location Modeling, and Spatial Analysis of Urban and Regional Systems. The contributions emphasize methodological innovations or substantive breakthroughs on many facets of the socio-economic and environmental reality of urban and regional contexts.

The second edition of this accessible text provides an integrated framework of the study of urban and regional economics. It offers a concise and up-to-date introduction to the main foundational models, principles, and theories of the subject, and uses a range of international examples to illustrate ideas.