Jobs in the city: explaining urban spatial structure in Kampala

Arti Grover and Somik V. Lall

No 7655, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper examines the spatial organization of jobs in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, and applies the Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002) model to explain the observed patterns in terms of the agglomeration forces and the commuting costs of workers. The paper suggests that: (i) Economic activities are concentrated in the downtown -- beyond which employment is spatially dispersed. (ii) Geographically weighted regressions identify five potential subcenters in 2011; however, none of these contribute significantly to employment. When explaining the variation in employment density across localities in Kampala, the research highlights that (i) density falls by 23.5 percent per kilometer increase in distance from the nearest potential subcenter; (ii) an increase in local production externalities of 10 percent increases density by 3.7 percent; and (iii) production externalities in Kampala's potential subcenters are extremely weak to have any significant impact even on nearby tracts.

Keywords: Urban Housing and Land Settlements; Urban Slums Upgrading; Labor Policies; Health Systems Development&Reform; Transport Economics Policy&Planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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