 AGING NATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF CITIES*Carl Gaigne and Jacques Thisse Journal of Regional Science, 2009, vol. 49, issue 4, 663-688 Abstract: ABSTRACT We investigate whether an aging population may challenge the supremacy of large working cities. To this end, we develop an economic geography model with two types of individuals (workers and retirees) and two sectors (local services and manufacturing). Workers produce and consume; the elderly consume only. As a result, the mobility decision of workers is driven by both the wage gap and the cost‐of‐living gap, unlike the elderly who react to the differences in the cost of living only. We show that the return of pre‐industrial urban system dominated by rentier cities does not seem to be on the agenda. Quite the opposite, the future of large working cities is still bright, the reason being that today's urban costs act as a strong force that prevents a large share of local services and manufacturing firms from following the rentiers in the elderly cities, while the supply of differentiated b2c services impede their complete separation. Date: 2009 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jregsc:v:49:y:2009:i:4:p:663-688 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Regional Science is currently edited by Marlon G. Boarnet, Matthew Kahn and Mark D. Partridge More articles in Journal of Regional Science from Wiley Blackwell |
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