Editorial | Why and how cities grow? | Laurent Gobillon

Over the past two centuries, a massive urbanization movement has developed in specific geographic areas before spreading to the entire globe. This urbanization is a major challenge for public authorities as it increases inequalities, particularly in terms of housing, transportation and access to culture.

Urban economics studies the attraction of cities to businesses and people, and the pitfalls that can limit their development.

Read the full contribution by Laurent Gobillon: “Why and how cities grow?”. In this editorial, he focuses on three major issues of city growth: agglomeration economies, urban costs and local amenities, and spatialized public policies.

Laurent Gobillon is professor at the Paris School of Economics and director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). He is also a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and editor-in-chief of the Regional Science and Urban Economics journal.

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Articles

• Brueckner J., 2011, Lectures on urban economics, MIT Press, 296 pp.

• Combes P. P. & Gobillon L., 2015, “The empirics of agglomeration economies, in handbook of regional and urban economics”, Elsevier, Vol. 5, pp. 247-348.

• Combes P. P., Duranton G. & Gobillon L., 2019, “The costs of agglomeration: house and land prices in French cities”, The Review of Economic Studies, 86(4), pp. 1556-1589.

• Duranton G. & Puga D., 2014, “The growth of cities. Handbook of economic growth”, Elsevier, Vol. 2, pp. 781-853.

• Duranton G. & Puga D., 2015, “Urban land use, in handbook of regional and urban economics”, Elsevier, Vol. 5, pp. 467-560.

• Glaeser E., 2011, Des villes et des hommes : enquête sur un mode de vie planétaire, Flammarion, 364 pp.

• Kline P. & Moretti E., 2014, “People, places, and public policy: Some simple welfare economics of local economic development programs”, Annual Review of Economics, 6(1), pp. 629-662.

*This editorial is part of the “Economics for everybody” formula.