DOES CBD THEORY SURVIVE THE TEST OF SMALL CITIES? CITY-SIZE AND SPRAWL IN ITALY

Abstract Economic theory predicts that the equilibrium of different economic forces explains the spatial scale of a city more than the uncontrolled take of agricultural land, which is considered instead as urban sprawl. A wide range of empirical results based on US data for large urban areas supports this hypothesis, showing that the socio-economic and environmental forces explain a vast portion of the variation in urbanization across cities. In this paper, we ask whether these socio-economic forces are relevant also in small cities and if they are in a different manner, provided that sprawling phenomena may occur more easily in small areas due to the larger availability of agricultural land. To answer the question, we estimate the relationship between city size and the socio-economic and environmental forces using data for small and large municipalities in the Lombardy region, Italy, and test to what extent this model is apt to explain size variations. We find that the model is adequate also in the case of small cities but differentiating small from large cities suggests that the sprawl hypothesis cannot be ruled out by the empirical evidence as the process of land conversion from agricultural to urban is substantially faster in small and medium-sized cities compared to large ones

The evolution of farm size : an exploratory study by configural frequency analysis

Investment support measures in agriculture can have differentiated effects on the strategic reorganisation and the performance of farms. In this paper, we study the patterns of technical change of a sample of farms in the Lombardy region, Italy, that invested in structural modernisation benefiting from the financial incentives provided under the measure 121. We find evidence relating the modernisation of farms under the umbrella of the measure 121 to limited positive changes in farmland and more substantial positive changes in other inputs. The results are not conclusive regarding a causal relationship between the measure 121 and the structural change of farms. Nonetheless, the paper describes a situation in which patterns of farmland reduction are relatively less frequent in farms that make use of this policy instrument

An Empirical Approach to Integrating Climate Reputational Risk in Long-Term Scenario Analysis

We propose an empirical approach to estimate the impact of climate transition risk on corporate revenues that specifically accounts for reputational risk. We employ the information on disclosed Scope 3 emissions to proxy companies' carbon footprint along the value chain. A threshold regression is employed to identify the emission level above which reputational risk impacts revenues, and we link this impact to a climate policy stringency indicator. We estimate the threshold regression on a sample of companies within the European Union (EU), and find the threshold at around the 70th percentile of the Scope 3 emissions distribution. We find that companies with Scope 3 emissions beyond the threshold experienced substantially lower revenue growth as climate policies have become more stringent, compared to other companies

Governance fragmentation and urban spatial expansion: Evidence from Europe and the United States

This study assesses the effects of urban governance structure on the spatial expansion of metropolitan areas. A more fragmented governance structure, represented by a high number of administrative units with decision power on land use per inhabitant, is expected to increase the competition between small towns in the suburbs of metropolitan areas to attract households and workers, which, in turn, induces more land uptake. We study empirically the relationship between administrative fragmentation and the spatial size of cities in a sample of 180 metropolitan areas in the contexts of the US and Europe in the period 2000-2012. Results shed light on the structural differences between the two broad regions and suggest that administrative fragmentation impacts positively on land uptake in both the United States and Europe, although to different extents

Urban sprawl and air quality in European Cities: an empirical assessment

In this paper we estimate the relationship between urban sprawl and a measure of air quality, namely the number of days in which the PM10 concentration exceeds safeguard limits in European Union cities. Building on a multidimensional representation of sprawl, the paper employs several indicators to account for built-up area development, population density, and residential discontinuity. The paper employs generalised additive models to disentangle the non-linear effects in the variables and the interaction effects of the three sprawl dimensions. A significant and robust effect of urban morphology emerges after controlling for socio-economic, demographic, and climatic factors and the geographical location of the city. We find that urban sprawl impacts positively on pollutant concentration, but the effect is highly context-specific because of threshold effects and interactions

Controlling Pollution in Rural Areas by Economic Instruments

The most interesting economic instruments for the control of environmental pollution belong to the categories of taxes (or charges) and of tradeable pollution permits. After the basic theoretical propositions of the seventies and their early applications, the search now is for practical methodologies and for a correct and effective use of such instruments. With this aim in view, the paper begins by introducing the concepts of environmental externality and of optimal level of pollution, then illustrates the two main options of control (taxation and market of tradeable permits) and briefly discusses their application in reducing pollution in wide rural areas

Alcune essenziali e semplici modifiche del PGT

Riflessioni critiche sulle modifiche apportate con l'approvazione definitiva al Piano di Governo del Territorio (PGT) del Comune di Milan