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Agglomeration, Regional Growth, and Economic Development

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Metropolitan Regions

Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

In the summer of 2007, the United Nations Population Fund released a report forecasting greatly increased levels of urbanization during the next two decades, especially in the developing world (United Nations 2007a). The report declared that for the first time in recorded history, more than half the world’s population resided in urban – not rural – areas. At roughly the same time, another agency of the United Nations (UN-Habitat) issued a report highlighting the slums and deplorable living conditions in cities in developing countries and estimating that at the end of 2007 there were more than a billion slum dwellers, largely in developing countries (United Nations 2007b). This latter report argued that in many cases the economic circumstances of urban migrants are worse than those of rural peasants. Four years earlier, it had been reported, also by the UN (United Nations 2003), that surveys of member governments eliciting their attitudes towards urbanization found that the “vast majority” of these governments would wish to shift populations back to rural areas and stem the tide of urbanization that has been experienced around the world.

Previous revisions of this paper were presented at the Metropolitan Regions Workshop sponsored by Jonkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden, April 2008, and at the Dialogue on Urbanization and National Growth Strategies, Washington, DC, April 2008. I am grateful for the comments of conference participants and also for the comments of Patricia Annez and Robert Buckley. Portions of this draft have benefited from conversations with Vernon Henderson and Stephen Malpezzi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    John M. Quigley

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  1. John M. Quigley
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Correspondence to John M. Quigley .

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  1. Economics, Finance & Statistics, Jönköping Int. Business School, Jönköping University, Gjuterigatan 5, Jönköping, 551 11, Sweden

    Johan Klaesson

  2. Economics, Finance and Statistics, Jönköping Int. Business School, University Jonköping, Gjuterigatan 5, Jönköping, 551 11, Sweden

    Börje Johansson

  3. Economics, Finance and Statistics, Jönköping Int. Business School, Jönköping University, Gjuterigatan 5, Jönköping, 551 11, Sweden

    Charlie Karlsson

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Quigley, J.M. (2013). Agglomeration, Regional Growth, and Economic Development. In: Klaesson, J., Johansson, B., Karlsson, C. (eds) Metropolitan Regions. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32141-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32141-2_2

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