Urban Economic Activities Research Articles

Your room is ready: Tourism and urban revival

Tourism is an essential sector of the global economy, contributing significantly to GDP and employment. Despite its importance, our understanding of its impact on urban economic activity remains limited. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of tourism on urban transformation using a dataset of hotel openings in Madrid from 2001–2010. I show that hotel openings positively impact the number of establishments and employment by using the number of protected buildings as an instrumental variable to account for the non-random distribution of hotel openings. Interestingly, hotel openings contribute to changes in the composition of the economic activities and the business structures, enhancing tourist-oriented corporate-owned businesses over other individual-owned companies. Finally, economic effects extend to the real estate market, increasing rental prices and residential investment.

Assessing the degree of personal exposure to PM2.5 in growing cities of Rwanda based on time-activity patterns and microenvironments

Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is strongly linked with a wide range of diverse health effects making it a substantial global threat and a critical concern for public health. While studies have been conducted on personal exposure (PE) to PM2.5 in specific environments, contributions of different microenvironments and activities to overall daily PE remain unclear. This study evaluates the degree of PE to PM2.5 in five growing cities of Rwanda based on individual’s time-activity patterns and visited microenvironments. A total of 150 participants were recruited to collect real-time personal and ambient PM2.5 measurements during their routine activities in different outdoor and indoor microenvironments for five consecutive days in dry season. Each participant was an employee in one of the six most prevalent urban economic activities found in their city of residence: workshops, flour mill plants, near road activities, garages, markets, kitchens and motorcycle taxi services. The participant’s day was categorized into three most distinct microenvironments grouped under home, work, and other microenvironments (other MEs). PE to PM2.5 assessed for all participants showed significant variability among types of activities and categories of microenvironments (p < 0.05). The work microenvironment experienced the highest daily mean PM2.5 exposures ranging from 12.67 μg/m3 to 192.64 μg/m3, followed by other MEs ranging from 13.25 μg/m3 to 113.58 μg/m3, while the lowest exposures observed at home microenvironment with concentrations ranging from 11.69 μg/m3 to 72.54 μg/m3 among 7 monitored activities in 5 cities. Exposure contributions and personal-ambient differences were dominated by the work microenvironment, with a daily contribution of flour milling activities reaching up to 51.55 %; and some participants were exposed to maximum PM2.5 concentrations up to 22 times higher than ambient levels while in the kitchen activities. This study highlights the significant effects of daily personal activities and visited microenvironments on personal PM2.5 exposure, and the importance of considering a personal lifestyle in understanding the true personal exposure.

Challenges of Street Vending Market in Urbanization from Gender Perspective: The Case of Nifas Silk Lafto Sub City, Jemo-01 Area, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Street vending is informal market. There are debates about street vendors, some argue that they cause problems in urbanization activities like pedestrian &amp; traffic congestion, pollution, crime, illegality and should be eliminated and other argue that they are essential for promoting urban economic activities and reduce unemployment. The aim of this study is to identify the main driving causes and challenges of street vending in Nifas Silk Lafto sub-city, Jemo- 01 Site from gender perspectives. Quantitative data collected from 216 questionnaires and qualitative data obtained from 36 key informants and in-depth interviewee. The quantitative data analyzed using, percentage frequency, correlation, Chi-square &amp; Mann-Whitney U test and qualitative data processed using thematic analysis. The result indicate that the driving cause for street vending are, high family poverty (P, 0.001) and easy to enter (P, 0.001) to street vending are more significant in male than female. However, lack of other job option (P, 0.001) is more significant in female. Regarding the consequence of street vending market, traffic congestion and car accident (P, 0.004), encourage illegality (p, 0.003) were the major significant negative consequence of street vending market. Whereas street vending support economic activities and mobilize work force is the positive consequence that the p, 0.034 &amp;lt; 0.05 at 95%. Regarding challenge of vending market, the result found that great challenge for female than male (P, 0.002), according to qualitative analysis, theft, physical harassment, confiscation of goods, health problem were major challenge. In conclusion, street vending market has both negative and positive consequence in urbanization process and different root cause for both male and female.

Remote high-speed rail stations, urban land supply, and the emergence of new economic activities

This study investigates the influence of high-speed rail (HSR) station placements on urban economic activities within cities. Specifically, we assess their effects on government-driven new land supply and market-driven emerging economic activities. Using data from 2007 to 2017, our analysis encompasses 720 HSR stations across 319 Chinese cities, with a focus on remote stations situated in the peripheral counties. Our findings reveal that remote HSR stations typically function as new city subcenters. They consistently drive the expansion of both land supply and economic activities (distance effect) and draw them toward the quadrant surrounding the station (direction effect). However, the alignment between their impacts on land supply and economic activities varies based on the city characteristics. In cities experiencing population declines, remote HSR stations notably affect land supply but have a negligible influence on economic activities, leading to resource misallocation and an increased risk of ghost towns. Furthermore, better HSR accessibility and higher tertiary industry proportions can magnify the spatial spillover effects of HSR station location on both land supply and economic activities.

Identifying the Central Business Districts of global megacities using nighttime light remote sensing data

ABSTRACT The Central Business Districts (CBDs) are important hubs for urban economic activities. In the context of globalization, a unified CBD boundary would greatly facilitate the study of global CBD comparative analysis, urban socio-economic development, urban transport and commuting mode. However, previous studies have encountered challenges in developing a practical method for global CBD identification due to limitations in data sources and methodologies. In this study, we selected 32 global megacities as research objects and used the open-access Black Marble nighttime light (NTL) products to construct indicators with the intensity and angular effects of NTL. Clustering and decision tree were then employed to derive rules for CBD identification. Results show that combining Z-score indicators and the strategy of clustering 32 cities before decision tree classification could improve the accuracy of CBD identification, which achieved a producer accuracy of 85%. The 32 cities were clustered into three types, i.e. U.S.A.-like, the mixed type, and China-like. The rules for CBD identification became more complex in the above order, but the accuracy decreased in turn. This study provides a new CBD identification method for cities lacking reference data, allowing for the delineation of unified and comparable CBD boundaries on a large scale.

Comparing city size distributions: Gridded population versus nighttime lights

AbstractThis paper compares the size distributions of cities when they are measured using gridded population and nighttime lights (NTLs) data. To do so, we exploit recent and accurate satellite imagery to proxy urban economic activity. Similarly to related studies, our results suggest that population is more equally distributed than lights at the country level. However, and calling assumptions established for urban NTLs into question, our findings do not support a Pareto function for their distribution. We also obtain evidence of a nonlinear and heterogeneous link between population and lights for a global sample of cities. Grounded on our empirical analysis, we develop a simple theoretical framework that relates the difference between the distributions of population and light emissions to the strength of agglomeration economies.

Spatial Patterns and the Evolution of Logistics Service Node Facilities in Large Cities—A Case from Wuhan

Logistics services are integral to urban economic activity, and delving into the spatial distribution traits and evolutionary pathways of various kinds of logistics service node facilities (LSNF) is markedly valuable for understanding a city’s functional spatial makeup and refining the spatial layout of logistics services. This study quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes the spatial congregation and spreading characteristics of diverse LSNFs in Wuhan in 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2020, employing kernel density analysis, average nearest neighbor index, mean center, and distance distribution frequency, seeking to characterize the spatial evolution characteristics of LSNF, alongside examining the trends in distances to city cores, principal adjoining roads, and production and consumption sites. The following conclusions were made: (1) Between 2011 and 2020, various types of LSNFs in Wuhan experienced a pattern characterized by the noticeable coexistence of spatial expansion and agglomeration, particularly visible after 2014. The degree of agglomeration is classified in a descending order as follows: CWC, STN, PSN, and PDN. (2) An “absolute diffusion” phenomenon characterizes the distribution of distances between various kinds of LSNFs and city cores or neighboring roads, with the lion’s share of high-frequency distribution zones spreading beyond city cores by 5–10 km, and a majority of the LSNFs being situated within 1 km from adjacent roads. (3) While the LSNF collective exhibits a stronger tendency towards the consumption facet, it reflects a surrounding of industrial production sites on the production facet and locations of manufactured goods consumption on the consumption facet, followed by locations of agricultural product consumption and comprehensive consumption sites.

European highways and the geographic diffusion of economic activities from agglomerations to less urbanised areas

This paper analyses the impact of highways on the distribution of economic activities between urban agglomerations and peripheral regions in the European Union. In doing so, I use an empirical strategy based on the land use theory employing disaggregated economic and infrastructure data. To address endogeneity, I apply an IV strategy exploiting non-local highway construction as a source of exogenous variation. I find that highways contribute to the diffusion of urban economic activities into surrounding areas, reducing the income gap between European agglomerations and peripheries. Reduced-form estimations suggest that the gap would have been nearly 3% higher in 2020 if the highway networks of European countries had remained at the level of 1990. The study concludes that transportation infrastructure policies can alleviate regional income disparities, increasing economic convergence between urbanised and less urbanised areas.

Urban land use efficiency and its driving factors in ecologically fragile areas: the case of northwest China

ABSTRACT Urban land serves as the medium for urban economic and residential activity. The degree of intensive and efficient use of urban land and the coordinated growth of the economy and society are significantly impacted by utilization efficiency. Northwest China’s temperature, geography, water, and soil characteristics make less of the region suited for urban development. Thus, it is imperative to investigate Northwest China’s urban land use efficiency (ULUE). This study applies the efficiency loss model to highlight the discrepancy between the optimal and actual values of each input-output variable of the ULUE, and uses the Super-SBM model to compute the ULUE of 39 cities. Additionally, the internal driving elements of the ULUE are examined using the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index. This study discovered that Northwest China had a low ULUE, with a modest upward trend seen between 2004 and 2018. The overall shape of the region was similar to an ‘N’ curve, with high efficiency values concentrated in the southeast of the region in 2018. When considering the agglomeration impact of urban agglomeration, these results are dependable. Moreover, the efficiency loss model discovered that pollution and wasteful resource usage were the main reasons behind the drop in ULUE in Northwest China. Finally, the GML index and its constituents revealed that the main force behind ULUE’s growth in Northwest China is technological developments. This research provides important policy implications for reducing the gap between eastern and western regions, supporting high-quality development in northwest China, and protecting and intensively using urban land.

ҚАТТЫ ТҰРМЫСТЫҚ ҚАЛДЫҚТАР ПОЛИГОНЫНЫҢ ҚОРШАҒАН ОРТАҒА ӘСЕРІН БАҒАЛАУ

Abstract. The most acute issue is the disposal of solid household waste in the territory of Taraz. The city does not have a developed and modern infrastructure for their processing and disposal. Almost all waste produced at the zhasyl-El Taraz and Aldi and K landfills is placed in landfills without processing, most of which do not meet the sanitary, hygienic and environmental requirements for the placement, arrangement and operation of such specialized facilities. To solve environmental pollution, it is necessary to create a suitable waste management system. For the disposal of solid household waste, there are no garbage processing plants and unauthorized landfills.In this regard, in the near future, it is necessary to create a special technology for mass cleaning of urban and rural areas, as well as land along unauthorized landfills, fields. Currently, one of the main factors of environmental pollution is the increase in urban economic activity, which, in turn, provokes an environmental crisis. In Kazakhstan, the problem of solid household waste is very important, because only 8-9% of garbage is recycled, and the remaining 90% is stored in landfills, which causes enormous damage to the environment. And in other countries, more than half of the waste is recycled, and they also earn significant income in this area. Such an acute environmental situation in our country is complicated by the lack of environmental capacity and the lack of a legal and technological solution associated with waste management of the system. So far, the vast majority of solid waste landfills remain technologically and technically imperfect, unproductive, environmentally dangerous, inefficient and legally unsecured.The problem of Kazakhstan's landfills is associated with the burning of garbage. Keywords: Solid Waste, Landfill, thermometer, fluorescent lamps, plastic.

High-speed rail and distribution of economic activities: Evidence from prefecture-level cities in China

Creating new subcenters around suburban transport nodes is a popular policy choice for urban development. In this study, we investigate how high-speed rail stations reshape economics activities in less populous cities. Employing night-light data at the pixel level, we demonstrate that the establishment of a new station has resulted in a flattened economic density gradient for Chinese prefecture-level cities. Notably, however, the gravitational core of urban economic activity does not exhibit a discernible shift towards the station area. This evidence suggests that the station area has not formed into a new subcenter; instead, it might have contributed to urban sprawl. We show that the formation of a new subcenter is tied to several pivotal determinants, which include the level of urban agglomeration, the distance to the original urban center, and government investment in the station area. Further analysis, grounded in a comprehensive dataset of land transactions, reveals that there has been no significant land price appreciation within the station area. This finding raises questions regarding the effectiveness of government-led new town development around the station area.

Urban clusters and land price variation in Jakarta, Indonesia

ABSTRACT Jakarta’s dynamism is impacted profoundly by the growing economic activity of urban agglomeration. The high intensity of urban economic activities has transformed the capital’s spatial configuration with the emergence of concentrated commercial areas, so-called urban clusters. The agglomeration stimulated an increased demand for commercial property, raising the need for land parcels. Theoretically, various determinant attributes influence land value; one of them is the location aspect. Location was often measured using the distance calculation method despite the questionable accuracy of the current city spatial structure. This research analyzes a new location attribute by considering spatial design and configuration, specifically from the arrangement of the surrounding environments. This study quantifies the degree of clusterization of an area and finds its relation to land value. We found that spatial clusterization positively correlates to the land value by 0.172%, and clusterization creates real estate advantages by adding more value to the properties within the cluster.

Historicising the informal/formal dialectic: A reflection on the conceptualisation of informality versus the history of ‘informal’ economic activities

The relationship between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors has long been a topic of academic inquiry. Brandon Finn's paper which focuses on a case study of Zambia argues for a deeper historicisation of the formal/informal inquiry. In my reflections on Finn's paper I suggest that Zambia's lack of a pre-colonial urban tradition may create some limitations on the historicisation of ‘informality’ and the discussion might usefully be pushed beyond the historical boundaries of European colonialism to consideration of urban economic activities in pre-colonial and pre-capitalist states and their urban centres.

Near-real time analysis of war and economic activity during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

This paper introduces near-real time data on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and uses these data to investigate the short-term impact of occupation and violence on local economic activity. The data project – VIINA (Violent Incident Information from News Articles) – parses news reports from Ukrainian and Russian media, georeferences them, and classifies them into standard event categories (e.g. artillery shelling) through machine learning. As we show, VIINA is more geographically comprehensive and more thoroughly documented than other open-source event databases on Ukraine, and is the only such effort to track territorial control. We illustrate applications for research on political economy, by utilizing remote sensing data on luminosity and vegetation as proxies for urban economic activity and agricultural land use. We find that economic activity declined most in urban areas that neither side fully controlled, and in places most exposed to artillery shelling. Areas under Russian occupation, however, were more insulated from these negative shocks. Although not causal, these findings are in line with the view that war brings not only economic devastation, but also vast geographic inequalities that are almost immediately observable from space.

Vital entrepreneurial ecosystems: The case of ICT in Yaba, Nigeria

Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) are concentrations of urban economic activity where businesses start-up, innovate, grow, and create opportunities for other businesses. Successful cases of EE in cities in the global South call for a contextualisation of the framework to those challenging conditions. We argue that their success results from their vitality, defined by growth and reputation, density and diversity of actors, networks coordinated on trust and resilience. We operationalised the concept of vitality and the EE key factors to search for processes that generate vitality. We grounded the study on the case of Yaba in Nigeria, which figures prominently as a growing ICT EE in Africa. We found three key processes (motivation, compensation, and mobilisation) develop vitality and are intersected by informality and trust. While one single study cannot claim representativeness, attention to these processes can guide EE promotion policies in the global South to gain effectiveness.

A New Method for Identifying the Central Business Districts with Nighttime Light Radiance and Angular Effects

Central business districts (CBDs) play a crucial role in urban economic activities. Thus, the location and boundaries of CBDs identified by the unified standards are essential for comparative analyses in urban geography. However, past research mainly applied specific data or sensitive methods to delimitate CBDs within local knowledge in the case study, there remains no automated standardization technique for identifying and delimitating CBDs across the globe. This paper proposed a new method for identifying CBDs based on nighttime lights (NTL) to overcome the above limitations. The main advantages of this method include (1) the use of available high-quality global Black Marble products, which are the basis of a standardized delineation of CBDs and (2) the use of more characteristics of CBD (i.e., the brightness) and NTL negative angular effects that can reflect high-rise building. The proposed method was employed in 14 cities in China and the U.S., and the results showed that China cities needed five NTL indexes and U.S. cities needed two NTL indexes to distinguish CBD and non-CBD successfully. Therefore, our approach is recommended for CBD detection and delineation over large areas.

Urban density, directed technological change, and carbon intensity: An empirical study based on Chinese cities

Technological change is one of the most effective methods to reduce carbon intensity. Meanwhile, cities are essential carriers of technological change and carbon emissions. Considering the extensive land expansion in urbanization which always manifests in the density of urban economic activity, this paper analyzes the relationship between urban density and carbon intensity and also the mediating role of directed technological change to explore the interaction among them. First, the authors construct a theoretical model that considers the knowledge production sector, final goods production sector, and technical choice. Second, based on the panel data of 280 cities in China from 2008 to 2017, the authors use the two-way fixed effect regression, mediation-effect regression, and panel-threshold model to examine the results. The results show that: (1) The increase in urban density helps to reduce carbon intensity. (2) Capital-saving technological change is a mediating factor in the path of urban density's effect on carbon intensity. (3) With the increase in market size, the effect of urban density on capital-saving technological change weakens, thereby weakening the inhibitory effect on carbon intensity. Findings can provide a reference for reducing carbon intensity in other countries to formulate reasonable and practical policies for sustainable urbanization, especially for developing countries.

Do higher‐quality nighttime lights and net primary productivity predict subnational GDP in developing countries? Evidence from the Philippines

AbstractNighttime lights (NTL) data from satellites are a useful proxy for local economic activity in developing countries where economic data are sparse. Yet most analyses use the flawed DMSP NTL data, a poor proxy for GDP in less densely populated and highly agricultural rural areas. In this article, we augment a novel NTL dataset of the newer and better VIIRS NTL data with more ubiquitous remotely sensed data, namely, net primary productivity (NPP) and land cover, and we test whether these satellite data predict subnational GDP in both urban and rural sectors of the Philippines. The results confirm that the higher‐quality VIIRS NTL data predict urban economic activity sufficiently well for both light‐intense and dimly lit regions but still do not explain rural economic activity very well. The use of croplands NPP as an intensive measure of agricultural productivity, however, dramatically improves the performance of land cover as a proxy. We demonstrate that remotely sensed data can be useful in various applications, including evaluating the long‐run dynamics of province‐level GDP growth, the local impact of natural disasters, and the effects of infrastructure projects at the city and municipal levels. Such applications point toward the need for empirical analysis of growth at finer scales of aggregation.

Does the Compact City Paradigm Help Reduce Poverty? Evidence from China.

City shape is an essential reflection of spatial structure, but it has largely been ignored in urban form research. This study employs night-time satellite imagery to depict the scope of urban economic activity to investigate its impact on urban poverty. It is the first study to provide a comprehensive assessment of the mechanisms of city shape on urban poverty by using the fixed-effect estimate methodology for panel data of 285 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that city compactness has an inverted U-shaped relationship with poverty incidence, which was verified by several robustness tests. Compactness can significantly attract more population into the city, and space costs and commuting costs are important influence channels. Furthermore, there exists heterogeneous nexus between city shape and urban poverty. Compactness has more significant poverty reduction effects in low-attractive cities with low productivity, low wages, and high illiteracy rates.

Freshwater macroinvertebrate traits assessment as complementary to taxonomic information for mining impact detection in the northern Peruvian Andes

AbstractAimWe studied the distribution of freshwater macroinvertebrate taxa and traits to distinguish ecological gradients among the mining‐controlled and natural headwaters, and rural and urban economic activity influences.LocationIn 2016’s dry season, macroinvertebrate samples were collected at 40 locations in the Mashcon watershed, northern Peruvian Andes. Six locations were in the headwaters directly influenced by mining, eight near‐pristine tributary headwaters, 14 agricultural locations at midstream and 12 urban locations downstream.MethodsEight traits (five biological and three ecological) were selected according to data availability, and modalities scores were assigned using the weighted and the dominant‐trait approaches. The traits relative abundances and abiotic conditions were compared among watershed sections. The ecological interpretability of the ungrouped data was verified with a distance‐based redundancy analysis.ResultsThe high‐altitude mining section had fewer taxa types and abundance, and distinct body forms distributions and prevalent body sizes in macroinvertebrate communities, relatable to the control of the mining headwaters. Physiological and ecological traits (respiration, mobility and attachment, food sources, feeding habits, saprobity and pH preferenda) differed among traits quantification approaches and were less informative at high altitudes. The ecological conditions from the near‐pristine tributaries recovered in the vegetated midstream section, to again be affected in the downstream urban section.Main ConclusionsOur results suggest the presence of ecological impairment despite the excellent physicochemical quality of the water discharged by the mine. The obtainment of autecological information at a higher taxonomic resolution, e.g. for ubiquitous taxa like Acari and Chironomidae, would be needed to advance the freshwater quality assessment of ecologically and hydrogeochemically complex Andean mining ecosystems.