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.

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.

Basics of calculus

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.

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

Modalità di esame: Prova orale obbligatoria; Progetto di gruppo;

Exam: Compulsory oral exam; Group project;

... 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.