The hidden dimensions of urbanity

Gabriel Ahlfeldt

No 2012/36, Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB)

Abstract: Cities are more than centers of production. This paper introduces new spatial variables in order to gain new insights into the role cities play as centers of leisure, consumption and beauty. First, a revealed preference indicator of urbanity is constructed based on geo-tagged photos shared in web-communities. Second, spatial variables are generated to capture features that have received little attention in quantitative urban research. Among them, the quality of the built environment, both with respect to contemporary as well as historic architecture, and the cultural endowment constituted by mainstream and avant-garde establishments. From a comparative spatial analysis of the European metropolises Berlin and London, I find that urbanity defined along these lines is of similar importance for the spatial structure cities as labor market accessibility and spillover effects. Urbanity attracts consumption affine households, especially the high-skilled.

Keywords: Amenities; consumer city; hedonic analysis; photography geography; property prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R20 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ieb.ub.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2012-IEB-WorkingPaper-36.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2012-36

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().