This book is a compilation of latest contributions on rural-urban disparities associated with economic growth and development, and policy options to alleviate a perceived divide between cities and hinterland. It includes articles from foremost researchers in urban, rural and international...

This paper was presented an OECD working group of city measurement, in Paris, in November 2006. It presents the rationale for, and a method for measuring, the ‘Functional Urban Region’ of London which establishes an estimate of its true economic extent, independent of its actual or...

Office space in Britain is the most expensive in the world and regulatory constraints are the obvious explanation. We estimate the ‘regulatory tax’ for 14 British office locations from 1961 to 2005. These are orders of magnitude greater than estimates for Manhattan condominiums or office...

There has been a growing literature in both the US (for example Haurin and Brasington 1996, and Black 1999) and the UK (for example Gibbons & Machin, 2001) that estimates the way in which school quality is capitalised into house prices. Cheshire and Sheppard 1995 and 1999 have estimated hedonic...

This paper investigates differences in the rate of growth of population across the large city-regions of the EU12 between 1980 and 2000. The US model which assumes perfect factor mobility does not seem well adapted to European conditions. There is evidence strongly suggesting that equilibrating...

This paper investigates growth differences in the urban system of the EU12 between the means of 1978/80 and 1992/94. Models in which growth of real GDP p.c. is the dependent variable perform well and make it possible to test significant hypotheses. The analysis supports the conclusion that...

Although directed to the British system of land use planning this paper has relevance for many OECD countries. The paper starts by characterising the basic features of planning systems which seek to impose 'growth boundaries' as has been the case in Britain since 1947. In contrast to the...

This paper analyses the factors driving convergence and divergence processes in the growth dynamics of European urban regions over the period 1978 to 1994. To achieve this, we develop a two-stage procedure. First, viewing growth of real GDP per capita as a multivariate process, a fully specified...