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Urban growth and subcenter formation: A trolley ride from the Staples Center to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl

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  • Berliant, Marcus
  • Wang, Ping

Abstract

The long-term trends of urbanization suggest: not only have more cities formed, but the leading metropolises have grown larger, with a number of peripheral subcenters developing over time. Conventional models of urban growth are limited, in that commuting cost and congestion eventually result in decreasing returns in a monocentric city as population becomes very large. We construct a general-equilibrium model with dynamic interactions between spatial agglomeration and urban development, driven by location-dependent knowledge spillovers. Our contribution allows endogenous development of subcenters to capture benefits from knowledge spillovers and offset diminishing returns from urban congestion, thus permitting more sustained city growth.

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  • Berliant, Marcus & Wang, Ping, 2007. "Urban growth and subcenter formation: A trolley ride from the Staples Center to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl," MPRA Paper 2770, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:2770
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    Cited by:

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    2. Garcia-López, Miquel-Àngel & Hémet, Camille & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2017. "Next train to the polycentric city: The effect of railroads on subcenter formation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 50-63.
    3. Picard, Pierre M. & Tabuchi, Takatoshi, 2013. "On microfoundations of the city," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2561-2582.
    4. Liv Osland & Inge Thorsen, 2013. "Spatial Impacts, Local Labour Market Characteristics and Housing Prices," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(10), pages 2063-2083, August.
    5. Ajay Agarwal & Genevieve Giuliano & Christian Redfearn, 2012. "Strangers in our midst: the usefulness of exploring polycentricity," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 433-450, April.
    6. Mossay, P. & Picard, P.M., 2011. "On spatial equilibria in a social interaction model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2455-2477.
    7. Jaume Masip Tresserra, 2012. "Does Employment Density death? Towards a new integrated methodology to identify and characterize Sub-Centres," ERSA conference papers ersa12p71, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Dominique Prunetti & Alexandre Muzy & Eric Innocenti & Xavier Pieri, 2014. "Utility-based Multi-agent System with Spatial Interactions: The Case of Virtual Estate Development," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 43(3), pages 271-299, March.
    9. Fan‐chin Kung & Ping Wang, 2012. "A spatial network approach to urban configurations," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(1), pages 314-344, February.
    10. Marcus Berliant & Takatoshi Tabuchi, 2025. "Market size, trade, and productivity reconsidered: poverty traps and the home market effect," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 13(1), pages 99-124, April.
    11. Picard, Pierre M. & Zenou, Yves, 2018. "Urban spatial structure, employment and social ties," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 77-93.
    12. William C. Strange, 2009. "Viewpoint: Agglomeration research in the age of disaggregation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(1), pages 1-27, February.
    13. Picard, Pierre M. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Urban Spatial Structure, Employment and Social Ties: European versus American Cities," IZA Discussion Papers 9166, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Wall, Howard J., 2013. "The employment cycles of neighboring cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 177-185.
    15. Elena G. Irwin, 2010. "New Directions For Urban Economic Models Of Land Use Change: Incorporating Spatial Dynamics And Heterogeneity," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 65-91, February.
    16. Hashem Dadashpoor & Neda Malekzadeh & Sadegh Saeidishirvan, 2023. "A typology of metropolitan spatial structure: a systematic review," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(12), pages 13667-13693, December.
    17. Steven G. Craig & Janet E. Kohlhase & Adam W. Perdue, 2016. "Empirical Polycentricity: The Complex Relationship Between Employment Centers," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 25-52, January.
    18. Jaume Masip Tresserra, 2012. "Identifying the Employment and Population Centers at regional and metropolitan scale: The Case of Catalonia and Barcelona," ERSA conference papers ersa12p70, European Regional Science Association.
    19. Grover,Arti & Lall,Somik V., 2016. "Jobs in the city : explaining urban spatial structure in Kampala," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7655, The World Bank.
    20. Akamatsu, Takashi & Takayama, Yuki & Ikeda, Kiyohiro, 2012. "Spatial discounting, Fourier, and racetrack economy: A recipe for the analysis of spatial agglomeration models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 1729-1759.
    21. Safiyeh Tayebi & Seyed Ali Alavi & Saeed Esfandi & Leyla Meshkani & Aliakbar Shamsipour, 2023. "Evaluation of Land Use Efficiency in Tehran’s Expansion between 1986 and 2021: Developing an Assessment Framework Using DEMATEL and Interpretive Structural Modeling Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-26, February.
    22. Nikolay Kurichev & Ekaterina Kuricheva, 2020. "Interregional migration, the housing market, and a spatial shift in the metro area: Interrelationships in the case study of Moscow," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(4), pages 689-703, August.
    23. Yoon Sang Moon, 2022. "Internal structure of consumer cities: Core and subcenters," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(5), pages 1250-1273, November.
    24. Xu, Shu-Xian & Liu, Tian-Liang & Huang, Hai-Jun & Wang, David Z.W., 2021. "Optimizing the number of employment subcenters to decentralize a congested city," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

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    Keywords

    Core-Periphery Urban Structure; Agglomerative Production Activity; Endogenous Formation of Cities;
    All these 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)
    • D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

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