Introduction

Abstract

When we look at a collection of city maps, we tend to be amazed by the enormous variety of shapes that social and economic mechanisms create under constraints of the nature. When we follow history of great cities, we feel strongly about dynamics of urban life. A single city shows different economic geographical patterns when it grows in different historical conditions. Cities grow, stagnate, and decline, depending on internal evolutionary mechanisms and their relations with the rest of the world. Economists have long been interested in searching for the causes and effects of urban growth. However, consistency and connectivity are weak among these approaches. It is reasonable to ask whether it is possible to build a general framework within which the varied urban issues and economic principles addressed in the traditional approaches can be examined in a consistent manner. The purpose of this book is to make an initial step towards constructing such a ‘general’ urban economic theory.