The Role of Amenities in the Location Decision of Households and Firms

Traditionally, cities have been regarded as centres of production: Firms produce goods in cities because agglomeration economies make them more productive. People live in cities because firms provide jobs and income. The existence of cities and closely related location decisions by households and firms have often been explained by these production linkages. Density is thought to offer agglomeration benefits on the production side but negative congestion effects on the consumption side. More recently, urban scholars have departed from this view and considered cities not only as centres of production but also of consumption (Glaeser et al., 2001). Workers have arguably become more heterogeneous in terms of taste, more educated and their incomes have risen. Firms have become more footloose and goods more diverse (Brueckner et al., 1999; Kolko, 1999; Kotkin, 2000; Glaeser et al., 2001; Florida, 2002; Dalmazzo & de Blasio, 2011; Glaeser, 2011; Bauernschuster et al., 2012; Suedekum et al., 2012; Ahlfeldt, 2013). These developments have left workers with more leisure time and income to spend on the consumption side so that workers and firms are no longer expected to only respond to classic production links but to a wide range of amenities. This dissertation intends to shed further light on the consumer city idea. Motivated by a lack of empirical evidence, I contribute to this young field of research by investigating different aspects of the role of amenities in the location decision of households and firms. The work is structured around the classification of urban amenities as suggested by Glaeser et al. (2001). This classification as well as related literature is presented in Chapter 2. The comprehensive literature review is intended to provide a background for the analyses carried out in this work. Moreover, it shows the field’s methodological development which is characterised by a move from correlations to establishing causality. Chapter 3 investigates the role of cultural amenities in the location decision of firms. I define cultural amenities as localised goods and services, which is one of the four urban amenity categories defined by Glaeser et al. (2001). The idea is that innovative service firms are highly footloose and mainly rely on qualified labour as input factor. At the same time, highly qualified and “creative” individuals have a strong preference for a rich social and cultural life (Florida, 2002). It is therefore expected that firms, following its workers, act as amenity-maximising agents. I empirically test this hypothesis by estimating a location choice model for internet start-ups in Berlin. The identification of the cultural amenity effect is based on the fall of the Berlin Wall which is interpreted as a quasi-natural experiment. Amenities are found to positively impact on the location of web firms. A comparison with other service industries moreover suggests that amenities are significant to the location choice of creative sectors, whereas no effect can be observed for non-creative firms. Chapter 4 is centred around the amenity role of aesthetics and physical setting, and on heritage preservation in particular. Heritage designation is considered to solve an externality problem thus providing benefits to home owners, in terms of a reduction of uncertainty regarding the future of an area, but at the costs of development restrictions. The chapter proposes a simple theory of the designation process, in which it is postulated that the optimal level of designation is chosen so as to Pareto-maximise the welfare of local owners. The implication of the model is that a) an increase in preferences for historic character should increase the likelihood of a designation, and b) new designations at the margin should not be associated with significant house price capitalisation effects. The empirical results are in line with these expectations. In Chapter 5 a third type of urban amenities according to the Glaeser et al. (2001) definition is investigated in further detail, i.e. speed of transportation. Transport’s important role in economics is beyond controversy. The estimation of the impact of a new infrastructure project is, however, not entirely straightforward as the relation between transport and economic development is plagued by a notorious simultaneity problem. The allocation of transport is not completely random and may respond to demand as infrastructure projects usually require large investment costs. Conventional causal inference has approached this problem by only focusing on the uni-directional effect of transport provision. I therefore propose a method, which is well established in macroeconomics, to explore the structure of mutually related endogenous variables. In particular, I run bivariate Panel VAR models using unique historical data for Berlin during a dynamic period when most of today’s public rail network was established (1881-1935). Results do indeed suggest a simultaneously determined relation between transport and urban development. Chapter 6 extends the previous analysis of the Berlin rail sector by applying the Panel VAR methodology to the city of Chicago, Illinois, and the development of the ‘L’ train over a period of over 100 years (1910-2010). The analysis can be interpreted as both an additional robustness test and a comparative study. Results are in line with the findings for Berlin. The dissertation ends with the conclusion in Chapter 7, where I summarise the main findings and stress important contributions to the literature

Game of zones: the political economy of conservation areas

We develop and test a simple theory of the conservation area designation process in which we postulate that the level of designation is chosen to comply with interests of local homeowners. Conservation areas provide benefits to local homeowners by reducing uncertainty regarding the future of their area. At the same time, the restrictions impose a cost by limiting the degree to which properties can be altered. In line with our model predictions we find that an increase in preferences for historic character by the local population increases the likelihood of a designation, and that new designations at the margin are not associated with significant house price capitalisation effects

Tools and data services registry: a community effort to document bioinformatics resources

Life sciences are yielding huge data sets that underpin scientific discoveries fundamental to improvement in human health, agriculture and the environment. In support of these discoveries, a plethora of databases and tools are deployed, in technically complex and diverse implementations, across a spectrum of scientific disciplines. The corpus of documentation of these resources is fragmented across the Web, with much redundancy, and has lacked a common standard of information. The outcome is that scientists must often struggle to find, understand, compare and use the best resources for the task at hand. Here we present a community-driven curation effort, supported by ELIXIR—the European infrastructure for biological information—that aspires to a comprehensive and consistent registry of information about bioinformatics resources. The sustainable upkeep of this Tools and Data Services Registry is assured by a curation effort driven by and tailored to local needs, and shared amongst a network of engaged partners. As of November 2015, the registry includes 1785 resources, with depositions from 126 individual registrations including 52 institutional providers and 74 individuals. With community support, the registry can become a standard for dissemination of information about bioinformatics resources: we welcome everyone to join us in this common endeavour. The registry is freely available at https://bio.tools

Bemannade Fartygsmodeller : som utbildningsplattform vid Sjöfartshögskolan i Kalmar

I arbetet som har pågått i nu mer än ett år har vi behandlat sådant som förutsättningar för ett sådant projekt, intresset därav från studenter, skola och näringsliv samt rent tekniska aspekter kring konstruktionen av en farygsmodell dess elektroniska och mekaniska system samt hur en sådan modell kan användas i utbildningen av elever. Även sådant som funderingar kring studenternas säkerhet i samband med konstruktionen av och kring användandet av modellen behandlas i detta arbete. Vi har använt oss av metoden ”Grundande Teori” och har kommit fram till att Sjöfartshögskolan i Kalmar har exceptionella och helt unika förutsättningar för att starta ett projekt där man bedriver utbildning med bemannade modeller.In the work process, which has been going on for more than a year, we have discussed things such as the conditions for a project of this type, the interest from students, the school and the industry as well as purely technical aspects around the construction of a ship model, its electronic and mechanical systems and how such a model could be implemented and used in the education of students at the academy. This thesis also brings up things such as thoughts around the students safety when building and using the model. We have used the method Grounded Theory and have reached the conclusion that the Kalmar Maritime Academy have exceptional and very unique conditions to start a project where manned models is used in the education of officers

Quantification of the dynamics of population heterogeneities in CHO cultures with stably integrated fluorescent markers

Cell population heterogeneities and their changes in mammalian cell culture processes are still not well characterized. In this study, the formation and dynamics of cell population heterogeneities were investigated with flow cytometry and stably integrated fluorescent markers based on the lentiviral gene ontology (LeGO) vector system. To achieve this, antibody-producing CHO cells were transduced with different LeGO vectors to stably express single or multiple fluorescent proteins. This enables the tracking of the transduced populations and is discussed in two case studies from the field of bioprocess engineering: In case study I, cells were co-transduced to express red, green, and blue fluorescent proteins and the development of sub-populations and expression heterogeneities were investigated in high passage cultivations (total 130 days). The formation of a fast-growing and more productive population was observed with a simultaneous increase in cell density and product titer. In case study II, different preculture growth phases and their influence on the population dynamics were investigated in mixed batch cultures with flow cytometry (offline and automated). Four cell line derivatives, each expressing a different fluorescent protein, were generated and cultivated for different time intervals, corresponding to different growth phases. Mixed cultures were inoculated from them, and changes in the composition of the cell populations were observed during the first 48 h of cultivation with reduced process productivity. In summary, we showed how the dynamics of population heterogeneities can be characterized. This represents a novel approach to investigate the dynamics of cell population heterogeneities under near-physiological conditions with changing productivity in mammalian cell culture processes.Funding by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Grant 031B0222). Funding by BMBF (Grants 031B0305 and 031B0577A).Funding from DFG Sonderforschungsbereich SFB841 (SP2)

Process-induced cell cycle oscillations in CHO cultures: Online monitoring and model-based investigation

© 2019 The Authors. Biotechnology and Bioengineering published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The influence of process strategies on the dynamics of cell population heterogeneities in mammalian cell culture is still not well understood. We recently found that the progression of cells through the cell cycle causes metabolic regulations with variable productivities in antibody-producing Chimese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. On the other hand, it is so far unknown how bulk cultivation conditions, for example, variable nutrient concentrations depending on process strategies, can influence cell cycle-derived population dynamics. In this study, process-induced cell cycle synchronization was assessed in repeated-batch and fed-batch cultures. An automated flow cytometry set-up was developed to measure the cell cycle distribution online, using antibody-producing CHO DP-12 cells transduced with the cell cycle-specific fluorescent ubiquitination-based cell cycle indicator (FUCCI) system. On the basis of the population-resolved model, feeding-induced partial self-synchronization was predicted and the results were evaluated experimentally. In the repeated-batch culture, stable cell cycle oscillations were confirmed with an oscillating G1 phase distribution between 41% and 72%. Furthermore, oscillations of the cell cycle distribution were simulated and determined in a (bolus) fed-batch process with up to 25 × 106 cells/ml. The cell cycle synchronization arose with pulse feeding only and ceased with continuous feeding. Both simulated and observed oscillations occurred at higher frequencies than those observable based on regular (e.g., daily) sample analysis, thus demonstrating the need for high-frequency online cell cycle analysis. In summary, we showed how experimental methods combined with simulations enable the improved assessment of the effects of process strategies on the dynamics of cell cycle-dependent population heterogeneities. This provides a novel approach to understand cell cycle regulations, control cell population dynamics, avoid inadvertently induced oscillations of cell cycle distributions and thus to improve process stability and efficiency