The 1990s were an unusually good decade for the largest American cities and, in particular, for the cities of the Midwest. However, fundamentally urban growth in the 1990s looked extremely similar to urban growth during the prior post-war decades. The growth of cities was determined by three large trends: (1) cities with strong human capital bases grew faster than cities without skills, (2) people moved to warmer, drier places, and (3) cities built around the automobile replaced cities that rely on public transportation. In the 1990s (as in the 1980s), more local government spending was associated with slower growth, unless that spending was on highways. We shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of change in patterns of urban growth, after all the correlation of city growth rates across decades is generally over 70 percent.
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Edward L. Glaeser & Matthew E. Kahn & Jordan Rappaport, 2000.
"Why Do the Poor Live in Cities?,"
NBER Working Papers
7636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Edward L. Glaeser, Jed Kolko, and Albert Saiz, 2001.
"Consumer city,"
Journal of Economic Geography,
Oxford University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 27-50, January.
Other versions:
Ed Glaeser & Jed Kolko & Albert Saiz, 2000.
"Consumer City,"
NBER Working Papers
7790, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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