Urban Infrastructure Services Research Articles

Costs of Deficient Infrastructure: The Case of Nigerian Manufacturing

As cities in developing countries continue to grow rapidly, the need to meet the increasing demand for urban infrastructure services has become an important policy problem, since failures to respond adequately to such demand affect productivity and the quality of life in those cities. Based on a survey of manufacturing establishments in Nigerian cities, this paper shows manufacturers' responses to the deficiencies of various public infrastructure services and the extent of the costs of private provisions which serve as the alternatives to the firms. From the empirical observations, the authors develop several policy options: (1) regulatory changes to enable fuller utilisation of existing private provision capacities, such as allowing the sale of excess private power supply; (2) private sector participation in the supply of infrastructure services to make such markets contestable; and (3) pricing policies which will be more efficient in the presence of congestion, systems failures and variations in private provisions by firm size and location.

The market behaviour of local utilities in pre-World War I Britain: the case of gas

m he development of the urban infrastructure and related services was a 1 major feature of Britain in the 40 years or so before the First World War. While national output was growing at i.8 per cent per annum in I873I9I3, the services sector's output was growing at some 2.3 per cent. Within the latter, gas, electricity, and water experienced increases in labour and capital inputs above 3 per cent per annum and, with total factor productivity growing at i.6 per cent per annum, the overall rise in output was 5.I per cent per annum.2 Yet little is known about the general characteristics of these local utilities. Moreover, analysing the market behaviour of local utilities is an important building block in understanding the growth of the public sector in Britain. Many of the services provided by local utilities exhibited problems both of externalities and of natural monopoly. In the case of water works in Britain, the USA, and Germany the pattern of growth was linked partly to questions of public health and amenities but the growth of income levels was perhaps just as important.3 In the case of gas, in addition, the generation of financial surpluses to relieve the rates has been seen by many as a strong inducement to municipalization. The undertakings had many choices to make; whom to supply, what volume, which areas? Were they simply interested in profit, or were their operations influenced more by empire-builders concerned with the growth of sales, or, especially in the case of municipals, were they reflecting the electoral interest of the councils by reaching as many consumers as possible? They were constrained both by their local environment (access to coal and labour, levels of income) and, nationally, by price regulation. How did these constraints affect their behaviour? There are now several original studies linked to particular localities and several samples of undertakings have been examined but without any detailed analysis either of the determinants of prices and costs or of the statistical significance of the results.4 This paper focuses on the behaviour of local

Distribution Characteristics of Land Value in Residential Areas

The purpose of this study is to analyze the distribution characteristics of land value in a residential area using an accessibility index derived from railway service, land use characteristics, and area structure indices. It was found that urban land value is influenced mainly by variation in accessibility, which depends on the condition of traffic facilities, but other regional conditions are also involved. A land value as an accessibility index, land use, processes of formation of the residential area, the existence of an urban infrastructure service, railway service conditions and population density.