The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is suffering from spatially divergent development. The uprisings of the Arab Spring in part reflected grievances of citizens who were or perceived to have been left behind, particularly by accidents of where they were born. This memo introduces a report...

Over the last century, the urban spatial structure of cities has transformed dramatically from a traditional monocentric configuration to varying forms of decentralized organization. This paper reviews theory and empirical evidence to understand the urban morphology of jobs and land use within a...

Although several studies have examined why overall price levels are higher in richer countries, little is known about whether there is a similar relationship at the urban and city level across countries. This paper compares the price levels of cities in Sub-Saharan Africa with those of other...

Strategies to help the one billion people worldwide who live in informal settlements have mainly focused on slum upgrading, sites and services programs and tenure security. In contrast, there has been less attention on what enables slum dwellers to transition into the formal housing sector,...

How does economic geography influence industrial production and thereby affect industrial location decisions and the spatial distribution of development? For manufacturing industry, what are the externalities that matter, and to what extent? Are these externalities spatially localized? The...

Traditionally, inequality measurements have been designed only for non-spatial applications, despite the argument that inequality is manifested in social space (and may be perceived spatially). Presented here is an approach to understanding urban inequality in terms of the spatial distribution...

Land acquisition for industry and infrastructure has become a source of major conflict in the last half decade in India. Sites like Singur, Nandigram, Niyamgiri, and Maha Mumbai, and phenomena like the Maoist insurgency are well-known. Some believe that land acquisition is the 'biggest problem'...