IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/44318.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How polycentric is a monocentric city?: centers, spillovers and hysteresis

Author

Listed:
  • Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M.
  • Wendland, Nicolai

Abstract

We assess the extent to which firms in an environment of decreasing transport costs and industrial transformation value the benefits of proximity to a historic CBD and agglomeration economies in their location decisions. Taking a hybrid perspective of classical bid-rent theory and a world where clustering of economic activity is driven by between-firm spillovers, Berlin, Germany, from 1890 to 1936 serves as a case in point. Our results suggest that the average productivity effect of a doubling of between- firm spillovers over the study period increases from 3.5% to 8.3%. As the city transforms into a service-based economy, several micro agglomerations emerge. Their locations close to the CBD still make the city look roughly monocentric. This is in line with a hysteresis effect in which second-nature geography drives the ongoing strength of a historic city center even though the importance of the originally relevant first-nature geography has vanished.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Wendland, Nicolai, 2013. "How polycentric is a monocentric city?: centers, spillovers and hysteresis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 44318, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:44318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/44318/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Ciccone, Antonio, 2002. "Agglomeration effects in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 213-227, February.
    3. Henderson, J V, 1974. "The Sizes and Types of Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 640-656, September.
    4. Plaut, Pnina Ohanna & Plaut, Steven E., 1998. "Endogenous Identification of Multiple Housing Price Centers in Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 193-217, September.
    5. Helsley, Robert W., 1990. "Knowledge and production in the CBD," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 391-403, November.
    6. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Raymond Owens, 2010. "Housing Externalities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 485-535, June.
    7. Berliant, Marcus & Konishi, Hideo, 2000. "The endogenous formation of a city: population agglomeration and marketplaces in a location-specific production economy," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 289-324, May.
    8. E Heikkila & P Gordon & J I Kim & R B Peiser & H W Richardson & D Dale-Johnson, 1989. "What happened to the CBD-distance gradient?: land values in a policentric city," Environment and Planning A, Pion Ltd, London, vol. 21(2), pages 221-232, February.
    9. Redding, Stephen & Venables, Anthony J., 2004. "Economic geography and international inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January.
    10. Edward L. Glaeser & Glenn Ellison, 1999. "The Geographic Concentration of Industry: Does Natural Advantage Explain Agglomeration?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 311-316, May.
    11. Liv Osland & Inge Thorsen, 2008. "Effects on housing prices of urban attraction and labor-market accessibility," Environment and Planning A, Pion Ltd, London, vol. 40(10), pages 2490-2509, October.
    12. Anas, Alex & Kim, Ikki, 1996. "General Equilibrium Models of Polycentric Urban Land Use with Endogenous Congestion and Job Agglomeration," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 232-256, September.
    13. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
    14. McMillen, Daniel P., 1996. "One Hundred Fifty Years of Land Values in Chicago: A Nonparametric Approach," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 100-124, July.
    15. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2004. "Evidence on the nature and sources of agglomeration economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 49, pages 2119-2171, Elsevier.
    16. Cheshire, Paul & Hilber, Christian A. L. & Kaplanis, Ioannis, 2011. "Evaluating the effects of planning policies on the retail sector: or do town centre first policies deliver the goods?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 31757, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Sergio Mariotti & Lucia Piscitello & Stefano Elia, 2010. "Spatial agglomeration of multinational enterprises: the role of information externalities and knowledge spillovers," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 519-538, July.
    18. Berliant, Marcus & Peng, Shin-Kun & Wang, Ping, 2002. "Production Externalities and Urban Configuration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 275-303, June.
    19. Fujita, Masahisa & Ogawa, Hideaki, 1982. "Multiple equilibria and structural transition of non-monocentric urban configurations," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 161-196, May.
    20. Sherwat E. Ibrahim & M. Hosein Fallah & Richard R. Reilly, 2009. "Localized sources of knowledge and the effect of knowledge spillovers: an empirical study of inventors in the telecommunications industry," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 405-431, May.
    21. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, 2011. "If Alonso Was Right: Modeling Accessibility And Explaining The Residential Land Gradient," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 318-338, May.
    22. Robert E. Lucas & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2002. "On the Internal Structure of Cities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1445-1476, July.
    23. McMillen, Daniel P., 2001. "Nonparametric Employment Subcenter Identification," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 448-473, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Kristoffer Moeller & Nicolai Wendland, 2015. "Chicken or egg? The PVAR econometrics of transportation," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(6), pages 1169-1193.
    2. Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Elisabetta Pietrostefani, 2017. "The Economic Effects of Density: A Synthesis," CESifo Working Paper Series 6744, CESifo Group Munich.
    3. Gabriel M. Ahfeldt & Elisabetta Pietrostefani, 2017. "The Compact City in Empirical Research: A Quantitative Literature Review," SERC Discussion Papers 0215, Spatial Economics Research Centre, LSE.
    4. Cuberes, David & Roberts, Jennifer & Sechel, Cristina, 2019. "Household location in English cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 120-135.
    5. Ahfeldt, Gabriel M. & Pietrostefani, Elisabetta, 2017. "The compact city in empirical research: A quantitative literature review," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 83638, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. repec:eee:juecon:v:111:y:2019:i:c:p:93-107 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Pietrostefani, Elisabetta, 2019. "The economic effects of density: A synthesis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 93-107.
    8. Nicolai Wendland, 2015. "All access: a micro-level case study on the secondary center of Berlin (1871–1936)," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(2), pages 375-399, March.
    9. Waights, Sevrin, 2018. "Does the law of one price hold for hedonic prices?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86418, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Jayson Danton & Alexander Himbert, 2017. "Residential Vertical Rent Gradients in the City," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 17.11, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    11. Jordan Rappaport, 2014. "Monocentric city redux," Research Working Paper RWP 14-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, revised 01 Nov 2014.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    transport innovations; land values; location productivity; agglomeration economies; economic history; Berlin;

    JEL classification:

    • N7 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services
    • N9 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • R33 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Nonagricultural and Nonresidential Real Estate Markets

    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:ehl:lserod:44318. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (LSERO Manager). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.