Fridays Academy

Conclusion

Urbanization is increasing at a rapid pace. Between 2005 and 2030, the world’s urban population is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.78 per cent, almost twice the growth rate of the world’s total population. The proportion of people living in rural areas will shrink significantly after 2015. While increasing urbanization has led to greater per capita incomes and productivity, at the same time, it has led to increasing informal sector, greater urban poverty, increasing number of slums, scarcity of housing, spiraling urban real estate prices, and inadequate infrastructure facilities. Given this phenomenon of economic concentration in one area and spatial disparities elsewhere, the key issue is “should rural labor move to jobs or should jobs move to rural areas?”  Finance and labor do not automatically move towards poorer areas. Available evidence from across the world suggests that policy makers should strive to remove impediments to capital and labor flows and reinforce agglomeration economies.  This can be done by policy makers encouraging labor movement by abolishing national minimum wages, cutting unemployment benefits and social benefits, and abolishing rent control to increase supply of housing.  Similarly, improving business climate, increasing access to finance, including microfinance and availability of credit to small enterprises, and developing infrastructure services before firms move in, are likely to affect the decisions of firms in location of their productive activities.  Strengthening the capacity of provincial and local governments in provision of essential services would be key to reduce economic concentration and spatial disparities.

Megacities and Urban Agglomeration

Dramatic decreases in costs of transport, communication and information technology should have reduced spatial disparities in economic activities and moved us to a ‘global village’.  Yet, we find that in both industrial and developing countries, economic activities are concentrated in a few centers and there are regional disparities.  For example, about 15 percent of world population live in temperate zones but produce 50 percent of world GDP.  In United States, counties that take up 2 percent of the land area produce more than half of U.S. GDP. Similarly, poverty is concentrated in a few pockets in many countries.  It was Krugman (1991) who deduced that agglomeration economies accrue at plant level and hence firms are located in a single area nearer to consumer demand in urban areas with large populations and minimal transport costs.  In other words, location of economic activity matters and a tiny (initial) difference may soon lead to a concentration of economic activity around a center and ultimately to a formation of industry cluster in the same space.  Agglomeration economies accrue at plant level, industry level or city and regional level.

From Raj Nallari and Indira Iyer's lecture notes.

Income and Employment

Urban cities provide drawing power for rural migrants seeking more economic opportunities. Duranton (2008) points out that labor mobility is crucial to the growth process as it generates new ideas and opportunities. Labor mobility responds to wage differentials across different locations. A study by Prud’homme (1996) indicates that the GDP per capita in most cities in Asian developing countries are higher than their national incomes. As seen in the table below, the per capita income in cities was 3.66 times the per capita income of the country in Shanghai, and 1.13 times the national average in Seoul.

GDP of Urban Areas Compared with National GDP

From Raj Nallari and Indira Iyer's lecture notes.

Urbanization and Growth

The world urban population is expected to nearly double by 2050, increasing from 3.3 billion in 2007 to 6.4 billion in 2050. By mid-century the world urban population will likely be the same size as the world’s total population in 2004. Virtually all of the world’s population growth will be absorbed by the urban areas of the less developed regions, whose population is projected to increase from 2.4 billion in 2007 to 5.3 billion in 2050. The urban population of the more developed regions is projected to increase modestly, from 0.9 billion in 2007 to 1.1 billion in 2050.

The urban growth rate of less developed regions reached a high at 3.0 per cent per year in 1995-2000 compared to 0.5 per cent in more developed regions. The urban growth rate is estimated to be particularly rapid in the urban areas of less developed regions, averaging 2.4 per cent per year during 2000-2030.