Urbanisation patterns: European vs less developed countries

Diego Puga

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We develop a model in which the interaction between transport costs, increasing returns, and labour migration across sectors and regions creates a tendency for urban agglomeration. Demand from rural areas favours urban dispersion. European urbanisation took place mainly in the XIX Century, with higher costs of spatial interaction, weaker economics of scale, and less elastic supply of labour to the urban sector than in LDCs today. These factors, together with a bias in the transport networks of LDCs towards serving larger cities, could help explain why European countries have developed balanced urban systems while primate cities dominate in LDCs.

Keywords: urbanisation; migration; regional integration; agglomeration. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F15 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 1996-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/20656/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Urbanisation Patterns: European vs Less Developed Countries (1996)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:20656

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