How should urban containment and the diversion of households to nearby residential areas be evaluated from a welfare economic perspective? Assuming the existence of a negative externality of city size, we develop a concise general equilibrium model for a mother city and a satellite. This satellite should be founded if the gain in surplus exceeds the fixed costs of intercity infrastructure provision, and a Pigouvian tax on the conversion of land to urban use in both cities would then attain the first-best allocation. Rising incomes and falling transport costs enhance the surplus gain from ‘clustered deconcentration’, or the accommodation of growth in planned satellites, relative to expansion of the mother city. Nevertheless, plans by the Dutch government to uphold strict growth controls around Amsterdam, while fostering large-scale residential construction projects in the nearby satellite of Almere, are difficult to reconcile with the optimal policy in a calibrated version of our model.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: R52 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Land Use and Other Regulations R13 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies R14 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
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Alex Anas & Richard Arnott & Kenneth A. Small, 1998.
"Urban Spatial Structure,"
Journal of Economic Literature,
American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1426-1464, September.
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