Caricamento in corso...
Urban and Regional Economics
01RVXQA
A.A. 2023/24
Course Language
Inglese
Degree programme(s)
Master of science-level of the Bologna process in Pianificazione Territoriale, Urbanistica E Paesaggistico-Ambientale - Torino
Course structure
| Teaching | Hours |
|---|---|
| Lezioni | 60 |
Lecturers
| Teacher | Status | SSD | h.Les | h.Ex | h.Lab | h.Tut | Years teaching |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pollio Andrea | Ricercatore a tempo det. L.240/10 art.24-B | GEOG-01/B | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Co-lectures
Context
| SSD | CFU | Activities | Area context | SECS-P/06 | 6 | C - Affini o integrative | Attività formative affini o integrative |
|---|
2023/24
While people live in cities to work, learn, obtain higher wages, consume and enjoy amenities, they also usually face higher costs, such as higher housing expenses, higher crime, congestion, and pollution. Why do individuals (people and firms) pay to cluster together in cities? Why some cities grow while others decline? Why are cities locally administrated? How can public policy improve the quality of physical space? How does the physical city interact with social outcomes?
This is an undergraduate course in urban economics, appropriate for students with no previous competence in microeconomics. The course teaches core topics in the field of urban economics as well as fundaments in microeconomic analysis.
The theoretical framework for answering such questions is grounded on the ideas of spatial equilibria, natural advantages and agglomeration spillovers. This course illustrates the theories that explain the existence of cities and some of the benefits and challenges they present.
In addition to providing an explanation for urban and regional dynamics, the course will present tools and methods for understanding urban public policies (i.e. rent control, land use regulation, transportation policy, etc.), urban investments and the relationship between urban morphology, techno-economic phenomena and innovation.
‘Urban and regional economics’ is a field of study that mobilizes microeconomic theories to understand how cities and regions emerge and evolve in relation to economic phenomena. While the dominant framework in the field consists of so-called ‘orthodox’ approaches, which emphasise market efficiency and mathematical modelling of spatial equilibria, ‘heterodox’ approaches combine microeconomic theory with a diverse range of inputs, from economic sociology, economic anthropology, Marxist economics, institutional economics, feminist economics, critical logistics studies, postcolonial studies, diverse economies, and others. This course offers an overview of the second approach, offering some disciplinary fundamentals and mapping core debates in the field. We will focus on key urban economies of contemporary life across the minority and majority world, including AI, algorithmic platforms, informal/popular economies, creative economies, tech clustering, finance and land rent. In parallel, the course will also interrogate how cities —through the various municipal and metropolitan authorities that channel their power— govern economic life, whether through policy or by becoming economic players themselves.
Skills in:
- modelling and solving simple urban microeconomic problems;
- understanding urban land and resources indicators;
- critically reading economic documents that analyse territory and local administration issues;
- understanding how to evaluate public and private investments in a urban framework;
- writing short essays with local economics focus.
• Understand key approaches and debates in heterodox urban and regional economics
• Understand how economic activities spatialize in urban centres
• Understand how techno-economic activities are transforming cities and regions
• Understand the role of municipal/metro governance in urban economies
• Learn how to develop a case study for technical reports
• Acquire basic skills for writing a short research essay based on primary and secondary sources.
Basics of calculus
The course does not involve any prerequisite skill sets, except for being able to close-read and analyse academic texts and policy documents, find and properly acknowledge primary and secondary sources.
1. Microeconomic fundaments – Scarce resources allocation: market vs. planning; externalities, commons e public goods; internal and external scale economies.
2. Agglomeration economies – The determinants of agglomeration: chance, natural advantages and agglomeration spillovers; localization and urbanization economies; sharing (intermediate inputs, labour pools), matching and learning (knowledge spillovers). Metrics of agglomeration with a special focus on distance-based measures.
3. Urbanization, dimensional structure and urban growth – Knowledge spillovers, specialization and human capital. Inequalities at a small and large scale.
4. The urban governance – Functions and powers of local administrations; costs and revenues (fiscal, non-fiscal and transfer revenues); negative urban externalities; zoning.
5. Analysis of regional distribution of economic activities: the sources of competitive advantage. Specialization, diversification and market power.
6. Application of spatial analysis to the retail industry. Retail dynamics and agglomeration. The role of public decisions in the retail industry. The role of the retail industry in urban areas. Metrics for attractiveness of retail space.
1. Introduction to urban and regional economics approaches
2. Urban political economy
3. Creative economies
4. Informal economies
5. Regional advantage
6. Tech agglomeration
7. Platform economies
8. AI and urban labour economies
9. Municipal finance
A more detailed syllabus will be provided in class. Attending students will have the opportunity of developing deliverables in class.
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The course will include frontal lectures, deep dives, seminar-style contributions, guest speakers, and in-class group work. A detailed syllabus will be provided in class.
REFERENCES
Glaeser, E.L. “Urban public finance” NBER Working Paper No.18244 (2012)
Henderson J. V. e H.G. Wang "Urbanization and city growth: the role of institutions" Regional Science and Urban Economics, 37 (2007)Scott A.J. e M.
O'Sullivan A. Urban economics, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead (2012)
Storper “The nature of cities. The scope and limits of urban theory” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39 (2015)
Lecture notes
Students are required to be familiar with all the following texts in order to perform well in the written exam. The exam is open book, so there is no need to study these papers by heart.
Textbook:
O’Sullivan, A. (2011). Urban Economics – 8th ed. New York: McGraw Hill. (Chapters 1,2,3,6,16, 17)
Papers and chapters:
Altenried, M. (2019). On the last mile: logistical urbanism and the transformation of labour. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 13(1), 114-129
Bathelt, H., Malmberg, A., & Maskell, P. (2004). Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation. Progress in human geography, 28(1), 31-56.
Chen, J. Y., & Qiu, J. L. (2019). Digital utility: Datafication, regulation, labor, and DiDi’s platformization of urban transport in China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 12(3), 274-289.
Cirolia, L. R., & Robbins, G. (2021). Transfers, taxes and tariffs: fiscal instruments and urban statecraft in Cape Town, South Africa. Area Development and Policy, 6(4), 398-423.
Cowen, D. (2020). Following the infrastructures of empire: Notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method. Urban Geography, 41(4), 469-486.
Elgin, C., & Oyvat, C. (2013). Lurking in the cities: Urbanization and the informal economy. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 27, 36-47.
Florida, R. (2003). Cities and the creative class. City & community, 2(1), 3-19.
Guma, P. K., & Mwaura, M. (2021). Infrastructural configurations of mobile telephony in urban Africa: vignettes from Buru Buru, Nairobi. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 15(4), 527-545.
Haila, A. (1990). The theory of land rent at the crossroads. Environment and planning D: society and space, 8(3), 275-296.
Hart, K. (1985). The informal economy. Cambridge Anthropology, 10(2), 54-58.
Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler: series B, human geography, 71(1), 3-17.
Jäger, Johannes (2020). Land Rent Theory. In Audrey Kobayashi (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Vol. 8. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 93-98.
Massey, D. (1979). In what sense a regional problem?. Regional studies, 13(2), 233-243.
McNeill, D. (2016). Governing a city of unicorns: technology capital and the urban politics of San Francisco. Urban geography, 37(4), 494-513.
Pratt, A. C. (2011). The cultural contradictions of the creative city. City, culture and society, 2(3), 123-130
Sadowski, J. (2020). Cyberspace and cityscapes: On the emergence of platform urbanism. Urban Geography, 41(3), 448-452.
Saxenian, A. (1990). Regional networks and the resurgence of Silicon Valley. California management review, 33(1), 89-112.
Storper, M., & Venables, A. J. (2004). Buzz: face-to-face contact and the urban economy. Journal of economic geography, 4(4), 351-370.
Tapp, R., & Kay, K. (2019). Fiscal geographies:“Placing” taxation in urban geography. Urban Geography, 40(4), 573-581.
Van Doorn, N. (2017). Platform labor: on the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the ‘on-demand’economy. Information, communication & society, 20(6), 898-914.
Zukin, S. (2021). Planetary silicon valley: deconstructing New York’s innovation complex. Urban Studies, 58(1), 3-35.
Slides; Dispense;
Lecture slides; Lecture notes;
Modalità di esame: Elaborato scritto individuale; Prova scritta in aula tramite PC con l'utilizzo della piattaforma di ateneo;
Exam: Individual essay; Computer-based written test in class using POLITO platform;
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The evaluation of the students will be divided in two parts: 15/30 will be attributes to a compulsory oral exam and 15/30 to a report composed of one or more essays (the report has to be sent by email no later than one week before the oral exam). Specific instructions will be distributed during the course. .
The works associated to the essays in the report are three (indicatively). The first will be an analysis of urban demographic data; the second is the analysis of the policies of a local administration in a specific year; the third one is a fieldwork aimed at analysing the distribution of retail activities in a specific e delimited urban area.
Students attending the course will be divided in groups and will present a report with all of the three essays; students not attending the course will select one out of the works to be presented individually.
Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.
Exam: Individual essay; Computer-based written test in class using POLITO platform;
Students may choose the exam modality between two options.
Option 1 (examination for attending students) requires attendance in class, as the deliverables will be developed during the unit and assessed during the exam.
Option 2 consists of a traditional written exam with three semi open-ended questions (each valued 11 points max). Details about exam modalities will be provided in class, including marking criteria. Also attending students can choose the written exam option if they are unhappy with their marks for the deliverables, or if they prefer a question-based assessment.
In addition to the message sent by the online system, students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are invited to directly inform the professor in charge of the course about the special arrangements for the exam that have been agreed with the Special Needs Unit. The professor has to be informed at least one week before the beginning of the examination session in order to provide students with the most suitable arrangements for each specific type of exam.