Location and welfare in cities: impacts of policy interventions on the urban poor

Informal settlements are an integral part of the urban landscape in developing countries. These settlements are widely distributed within cities, including central business centers and peripheral areas with environment hazards. In most cases, residents of these settlements do not have access to basic public services and amenities. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of interventions, such as upgrading basic services and resettlement policies, on the welfare of residents of these informal settlements, who are typically the urban poor. To examine these interventions, they estimate models of residential location choice and allow households to be sensitive to commuting costs to work, demand for public services, and preferences for community composition. The authors'empirical analysis is based on recently collected survey data from Pune, India, and shows that poor households prefer to live close to work and in communities that consist of people sharing common socio-demographic characteristics. From the perspective of households living in informal settlements, upgrading settlements in the original place is welfare enhancing. If a household must be relocated, it greatly prefers to be moved to a community that resembles its current community.Municipal Financial Management,Public Health Promotion,Decentralization,Housing&Human Habitats,Urban Services to the Poor,Municipal Financial Management,Housing&Human Habitats,VN-Acb Mis -- IFC-00535908,Urban Housing,City Development Strategies

Secondary centres of economic activity in the East Midlands: Summary Report

This summary report outlines the findings of a study of secondary centres of economic activity in the East Midlands. Secondary centres are defined here as urban settlements that are smaller than a principal urban area, but still significant as a centre of economic activity. In this study, secondary centres include a range of settlements, from large industrial towns to small market towns. This research has been undertaken by the Enterprise Research and Development Unit at the University of Lincoln for the East Midlands Development Agency (emda)

A worldwide model for boundaries of urban settlements

The shape of urban settlements plays a fundamental role in their sustainable planning. Properly defining the boundaries of cities is challenging and remains an open problem in the Science of Cities. Here, we propose a worldwide model to define urban settlements beyond their administrative boundaries through a bottom-up approach that takes into account geographical biases intrinsically associated with most societies around the world, and reflected in their different regional growing dynamics. The generality of the model allows to study the scaling laws of cities at all geographical levels: countries, continents, and the entire world. Our definition of cities is robust and holds to one of the most famous results in Social Sciences: Zipf's law. According to our results, the largest cities in the world are not in line with what was recently reported by the United Nations. For example, we find that the largest city in the world is an agglomeration of several small settlements close to each other, connecting three large settlements: Alexandria, Cairo, and Luxor. Our definition of cities opens the doors to the study of the economy of cities in a systematic way independently of arbitrary definitions that employ administrative boundaries

The geometry of slums: boundaries, packing and diversity

The geometry of squatter settlements on the northeastern coast of Brazil is examined and compared to settlements in the central region of Kenya. In particular, fragmented structures, often squatter settlements composed of islands of dwelling or �habitations� in these settlements, and void areas which are unoccupied regions between dwellings, are studied. We find that such settlements, when constrained by urban and natural boundaries, present robust configurational patterns, which we can express best by statistical distributions with the scaling properties. Such scaling properties, when considered in the context of urban planning, can be useful for describing and predicting the spatial and social parameters of such squatter settlements. Several scaling functions and other mathematical formulae, which are of interest in planning, are also derived and discussed

The spatial division of labor in Nepal

the authors examine how economic activity and market participation are distributed across space. Applying a nonparametric von Thunen model to Nepalese data, the authors uncover a strong spatial divisionof labor. Nonfarm employment is concentrated in and around cities, while agricultural wage employment dominates villages located further away. Vegetables are produced near urban centers. Paddy and commercial crops are more important at intermediate distances. Isolated villages revert to self-subsistence. The findings of the study are consistent with the von Thunen model of concentric specialization, corrected to account for city size. Spatial division of labor is closely related to factor endowments and household characteristics, especially at the local level.Environmental Economics&Policies,Housing&Human Habitats,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Housing&Human Habitats,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies,Crops&Crop Management Systems

City of slums: self-organisation across scales

The city is certainly a fine example of a complex system, where the parts can only be understood through the whole, and the whole is more than the simple sum of the parts. In the present paper we explore the idea that some of these parts are themselves complex systems and the interrelation between complex subsystems with the overall system is a necessary issue to the understanding of the urban complex system. Spontaneous settlements are clear examples of complex subsystems within a complex urban system. Their morphological characteristics combined with their development process are traditionally understood as chaotic and unorganised. And so are Third World cities, traditionally known for their inherent chaotic and discontinuous spatial patterns and rapid and unorganised development process. The paper consists in a brief theoretical analysis developed on the interrelationship between two urban processes across scales: the local process of formation of inner-city squatter settlements and the global process of urban growth. What is the role that spontaneous settlements play in the global dynamics of the city? We explore this issue by analysing experiments of ‘City-of-slums’, an agent-based model that focuses on the process of consolidation of inner-city squatter settlements within a peripherisation process. The paper also includes two previous studies on these topics where the dynamics of these two urban processes are examined as two isolated complex systems and an analysis of the morphological fragmentation of the distribution of spontaneous settlements within the overall city and within the spontaneous settlements themselves. Based on these analyses, we conclude with a brief discussion on the role of self-organisation in the socio-spatial dynamics of Third World cities

Assessing texture pattern in slum across scales: an unsupervised approach

According to the Global Report on Human Settlements (United Nations, 2003), almost 1 billion people (32% of the world ’s population) live in squatter settlements or slums. Recently, the perception of these settlements has changed, from harmful tumours which would spread around sickly and unhealthy cities, to a new perspective that interpret them as social expressions of more complex urban dynamics. However, considering a report from UNCHS - United Nations Center for Human Settlements, in relation to illegal and disordered urbanisation issue, some of the main challenges faced by cities are related to mapping and registering geographic information and social data spatial analysis. In this context, we present, in this paper, preliminary results from a study that aims to interpret city from the perspective of urban texture, using for this purpose, high resolution remote sensing images. We have developed analytic experiments of "urban tissue" samples, trying to identify texture patterns which could (or could not) represent distinct levels of urban poverty associated to spatial patterns. Such analysis are based on some complex theory concepts and tools, such as fractal dimension and lacunarity. Preliminary results seems to suggest that the urban tissue is fractal by nature, and from the distinct texture patterns it is possible to relate social pattern to spatial configuration, making possible the development of methodologies and computational tools which could generate, via satellite, alternative and complementary mapping and classifications for urban poverty

The Legacy Effect of Squatter Settlements on Urban Redevelopment

The paper presents a theoretical model that seeks to answer the question of why former squatter settlements tend to upgrade/redevelop at a slower pace than otherwise similar settlements originating in the formal sector. We argue that squatter settlers’ initial strategy to access urban land creates a ‘legacy effect’ that curtails settlement upgrading possibilities even after the settlements are granted property titles. We test our model using the case of Cochabamba, Bolivia and obtain results consistent with our theoretical model prediction. Our results suggest that the commonly used ‘benign neglect while keeping the threat of eviction’ policy has profound impacts on how land is developed in the informal sector and this poses costly consequences for local governments after legalization.squatters, informal settlements, urban development, neighbourhood upgrading, urban redevelopment

New urban settlements in a perspective of public and private interests

Changes of land use pattern and urban form could be seen as a dynamic result of the trade off by public and private interests. Private interest – individual residents or firms – tries, according to micro economic theory, to maximize their individual utility. Public interests – conveyed by government institutions on different geographical levels - on the other hand, try according to macro economic theories to maximize the general welfare in a community according to the preferences of the political system. The focus is to measure the importance of spatial locations factors regarding new residential and commercial buildings in relation to the existing urban form, political guidelines and ecological features. In the region transportation infrastructure systems, as high speed commuting train and highways, have been implemented in the middle of the period. The time period investigated is 1992-2000. The importances of the location factors were obtained by logistic regression analysis and transformation of the ß -values into elasticities. The dependent variables were settlements of new urban elements in pixels of 50*50 meters. Independent variables where distances to existing urban elements, presence of public interests and some ecological features as south faced hill slopes, distance to water areas and geology. Results from this projects reveals that new urban settlements in general are located in proximity to existing urban settlements of the same kind, in remotness to existing urban focal points and to some extend within planned areas. National/regional transportation nodes do not have any apparent influence on the location. A general conclusion from this investigation is that the built environment develops towards a further dispersed rural spatial pattern though with some correspondence to the comprehensive land use plan.