Título
The Costs and Benefits of Urban Expansion: Evidence from Mexico, 1990–2010. Working Paper WP19JM1
Autor
Jorge Alberto Montejano Escamilla
Paavo Monkkonen
Erick Guerra
Nivel de Acceso
Acceso Abierto
Materias
Resumen o descripción
Urbanization is generally linked to economic growth, and agglomeration economies mean that
people in larger cities are more productive. However, urban expansion is also associated with
congestion, localized environmental damage, and in many countries, deficiencies in
infrastructure and housing conditions. Urban policies worldwide are increasingly based on an
apparent international consensus that urban compactness is a desirable policy goal, for reasons of
environmental sustainability and economic productivity. However, there is almost no evidence
that compact cities are more productive outside of high-income countries, with a productive
service sector. Given that land-intensive manufacturing activities is the economic base of many
cities in Latin America, policies promoting compactness may reduce economic productivity by
constraining expansion. The tensions between environmental, social and economic goals in the
urban policy of countries with rapidly expanding cities has not been sufficiently studied. Mexico
is an ideal case study because of the rapid rate at which cities have been growing in recent
decades. In this report, we examine impacts—both positive and negative—of the way in which
cities have been growing in Mexico. First, we test the relationship between urban form and
economic productivity, testing the hypothesis that growing in a compact manner promotes
productivity. We find that in Mexico, urban sprawl is associated with higher levels of economic
productivity. This finding is counterintuitive and raises questions about the conventional wisdom
related to cities and economic growth. We then examine two of the important ‘costs’ of urban
expansion: transportation and socio-economic segregation. Findings in these cases confirm
expectations that more sprawling cities have higher transportation costs and more socioeconomic segregation. We conclude by arguing that policy makers must at least acknowledge the
tradeoffs between productivity, transportation costs, and socio-spatial structure.
Editor
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Fecha de publicación
marzo de 2019
Tipo de publicación
Documento de trabajo
Versión de la publicación
Versión publicada
Recurso de información
Formato
application/pdf
Idioma
Inglés
Audiencia
Público en general
Repositorio Orígen
Repositorio Institucional de CENTROGEO
Descargas
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