On the location and ‘lock-in’ of cities: geography vs. transportation technology

Kristian Behrens ()

No 2004044, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We investigate where cities are located in a spatial economy and why they tend to get "locked-in" at particular sites. Building on Fujita and Krugman (1995) we show that geography and/or transportation technology must exhibit some "non-smoothness" for cities to possibly become "locked-in" in location space. Our results establish that no asymmetric monocentric equilibriumcan be generically sustained when space is homogenous and transportation technologies are "smooth", whereas it can in the presence of transportation hubs and/or concave transport cost functions. This suggests that cities are drawn to transportation hubs during the early stages of economic development, whereas they can be sustained almost everywhere during later stages.

Keywords: transport hubs; transport costs; economic geography; location theory; smoothness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 C62 F12 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On the location and lock-in of cities: Geography vs transportation technology (2007)
Working Paper: On the location and lock-in of cities: geography vs transportation technology (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2004044

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