Throughout the imperial era, defensive walls surrounded Chinese cities. Although most city walls have vanished, the cities have survived. We analyze a sample of nearly 300 prefectural-level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had...

This paper provides some elements to explain the observed takeover in some urban areas of a new kind of elite associated with new economy jobs, also known as "bourgeois bohème" (bobos). This takeover has been associated with greater investment in urban amenities and "clean" means of transport,...

There are large spatial disparities in unemployment durations across the 1,300 municipalitiesin the Ile-de-France region (Paris Greater Area). In order to characterize these imbalances,we estimate a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality on an exhaustive datasetof all unemployment...

Urbanization economies - the effects on productivity and utility created endogenously by larger cities - are a fundamental component of both the economic geography of modern societies and the perpetuation of innovation and economic growth at a national level. Cities account for vast majorities...

Recent theoretical work has examined the spatial distribution of unemployment using the efficiency wage model as the mechanism by which unemployment arises in the urban economy. This paper extends the standard efficiency wage model in order to allow for behavioral substitution between leisure...

Despite the many negative aspects of life in cities, urban promises of economic prosperity, freedom and happiness have fuelled the imagination of generations of migrants, who have flocked to cities in search of a better life, invariably exaggerating the opportunities and neglected the potential...

The path of urbanization around the world and in particular in China has been rapid. This study addresses measurement of a composite index of networking among key components of societal infrastructure and how it affects the process of urbanization. This study has a number of objectives. First we...

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during the 1970s and 1980s, half of which provided infrastructure in previously...

Despite the massive forced relocation of residents during urban restructuring in China, there are no systematic studies on how residents undergo the process. Most studies concerning urban restructuring in China directly equate forced relocation with displacement, which has a negative...

In the last few decades, urban renewal policies have taken firm root in many Western European countries. Underlying these renewal policies is a strong belief in negative neighborhood effects of living in poverty concentration areas, often neighborhoods with a large share of social housing. In...