The role of historic amenities in shaping cities

The existence of amenities matters to understanding people's residential choices. Our theoretical model extends the standard urban model by introducing exogenous amenities to explain population allocation within cities. To estimate the model predictions, we focus on historic amenities using det...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: García López, Miquel-Àngel|||0000-0002-0515-2922, Viladecans Marsal, Elisabet|||0000-0003-3722-2371
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:321968
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/321968
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2024.104042
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Amenities
Buildings
Density
History
Transportation
SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
Descripción
Sumario:The existence of amenities matters to understanding people's residential choices. Our theoretical model extends the standard urban model by introducing exogenous amenities to explain population allocation within cities. To estimate the model predictions, we focus on historic amenities using detailed geolocated data for 579 European cities. We analyze how the shape of city centers endowed or not endowed with these amenities is affected. We measure historic amenities with the location of buildings from the Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance-Baroque periods. Our results show that cities with historic buildings in their centers have steeper population density gradients, are more compact and centralized, and have been less affected by the suburbanization processes caused by transportation improvements. Heterogeneity analyses show that the quantity and the quality of historic buildings also matter. Several robustness checks controlling for natural and modern amenities and testing for the spatial scope of these amenities verify our main results.