IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/21059.html

War Destruction, Commercial Relocation and Urban Recovery

Author

Listed:
  • Gröger, Andre
  • Mueller, Hannes

Abstract

We study how cities reorganize after large-scale wartime destruction, using Aleppo after the Syrian civil war as a case study. We construct a 30m × 30m panel for the period 2013 to 2025 combining repeated manual and AI damage assessments, OpenStreetMap points-of-interest for commerce and amenities, and independent recovery proxies from nighttime lights and builtup area. Destruction sharply reduces commerce and amenities, with strong neighbourhood spillovers. Commerce concentrates in less damaged areas and continues to relocate away from destroyed cells even within neighbourhoods. Recovery is selective: nighttime lights largely catch up in the 2020s, while community institutions only partially return to destroyed areas. Overall, the results point to sector-specific adjustment dynamics and persistent spatial reallocation that can leave damaged neighbourhoods on a lower amenity trajectory long after fighting ends.

Suggested Citation

  • Gröger, Andre & Mueller, Hannes, 2026. "War Destruction, Commercial Relocation and Urban Recovery," CEPR Discussion Papers 21059, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP21059
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • C45 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Neural Networks and Related Topics
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.