Influence of Quality of Life on Urban Growth: A Case Study of Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

Royuela V., Moreno R. and Vayá E. Influence of quality-of-life on urban growth: a case study of Barcelona, Spain, Regional Studies. There are several determinants that influence household location decisions. More concretely, the recent economic literature assigns an increasingly important role to the variables governing quality-of-life. Nevertheless, the spatial stationarity of the parameters is implicitly assumed in most studies. The paper analyses the role of quality-of-life in urban economics and tests for the spatial stationarity of the relationship between city growth and quality-of-life.

Royuela V., Moreno R. et Vayá E. L'impact de la qualité de la vie sur la croissance urbaine, Regional Studies. Nombreuses sont les déterminants du choix d'emplacement des ménages. Essentiellement, la documentation économique récente accorde un rôle de plus en plus important aux variables qui déterminent la qualité de la vie. Néanmoins, la plupart des études supposent implicitement une géographie stationnaire des paramètres. On cherche à analyser le rôle de la qualité de la vie dans l'économie urbaine et on fait des analyses pour déceler la géographie stationnaire du rapport entre la croissance urbaine et la qualité de la vie.

Qualité de la vie Economie urbaine Croissance urbaine Régressions géographiques pondérées

Royuela V., Moreno R. und Vayá E. Der Einfluss der Lebensqualität auf das Wachstum von Städten. Eine Fallstudie von Barcelona, Regional Studies. Die Entscheidung für den Standort von Haushalten wird von mehreren Determinanten beeinflusst. Insbesondere wird in der aktuellen Wirtschaftsliteratur den für die Lebensqualität ausschlaggebenden Variablen ein zunehmend hoher Stellenwert eingeräumt. Allerdings wird in den meisten Studien für diese Parameter implizit eine räumliche Unveränderlichkeit angenommen. In diesem Beitrag analysieren wir die Rolle der Lebensqualität in der Ökonomie von Städten und überprüfen die räumliche Unveränderlichkeit der Beziehung zwischen Stadtwachstum und Lebensqualität.

Lebensqualität Ökonomie von Städten Stadtwachstum Geografisch gewichtete Regressionen

Royuela V., Moreno R. y Vayá E. La influencia de la calidad de vida en el crecimiento urbano. Estudio del caso de Barcelona, Regional Studies. La decisión de elegir el lugar de la vivienda depende de varios factores determinantes. En concreto, la reciente literatura económica asigna un papel cada vez más importante a las variables que gobiernan la calidad de vida. Sin embargo, en la mayoría de estudios se supone implícitamente la estacionalidad espacial de los parámetros. Aquí analizamos el papel de la calidad de vida en la economía urbana y comprobamos la estacionalidad espacial de la relación entre el crecimiento de las ciudades y la calidad de vida.

Calidad de vida Economía urbana Crecimiento de las ciudades Regresiones ponderadas geográficamente

Keywords:

• Quality-of-life
• Urban economics
• City growth
• Geographically weighted regressions

JEL classifications:

• E00
• R00

Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Lauridsen for his useful comments on a previous version of this paper presented at the 2nd Workshop on Spatial Econometrics, Zaragoza, Spain, October 2006. Vicente Royuela acknowledges the support of Project No. CICYT SEJ2006-07665 and the Mobility grant from the Education and Science Ministry (Grant No. PR2005-0253). Rosina Moreno acknowledges financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Programa Nacional de I+D+I (Grant No. SEJ2005-07814/ECON). Esther Vayá acknowledges financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Programa Nacional de I+D+I (Grant No. SEJ2005-04348/ECON).

Notes

Besides the factors used to find differences between areas, one can also expect to find spatial differences within a city. Some of them can arise due to the classical processes driving to segregation (for a review, see Vargas and Royuela, 2007), while others can be due to the existence of housing sub-markets. Regarding the latter, in the early urban economic literature of the 1950s and 1960s, and in the long-run equilibrium models, the city is treated as one entity and housing as a homogeneous commodity demanded in it. Different preferences for location and housing size and in households' ability to pay indicate segmentation in the urban housing market. From a supply point of view, Strazheim (1975) highlighted the heterogeneous and fixed nature of housing as a commodity, and proposed the treatment of urban space in discrete areas. Thus, the housing market is both spatially and sectorally complex, and an imperfect market with a high probability of short-run disequilibria. But also in the long run the lengthy adjustment lags on both the supply and the demand side mean that the housing market hardly ever adjusts fully and is continuously on a dynamic path towards equilibrium (Watkins, 2001).

Municipalities are the smallest official territorial division in Spain and correspond to NUTS V in the European administrative classification. In 2006, the 44 708 964 Spanish inhabitants lived in 8110 municipalities. The fourth section of the paper discusses the election of the municipalities as the basic unit of analysis.

For a review of the connections between quality-of-life and urban economics, see Lambiri et al. (2007).

As Evans (1990) shows, migrations can occur even if no quality-of-life differentials are present between locations due to, among other reasons, the existence of consistent patterns over the life cycle. Consequently, although not included in the model, the authors understand that individual/household circumstances are important in defining quality-of-life or aspirational amenities, and that they may vary over the life course.

Muñiz et al. (2003) defined the Barcelona area as a Mediterranean polycentric city where the polycentricity is derived from the large urban centre expanded into its commuting area, incorporating medium-sized cities that had previously been self-sufficient.

In fact, Capello and Camagni (2000) discussed how the lack of information on the flows of interaction between their sample cities (the duration or the number of telephone calls) obliged them to include a variable that represented the number of telephone subscribers. The present authors, therefore, understand that, although this variable may no longer be appropriate, for the considered period it can be seen as a good indicator of the network paradigm. In addition, the information for 1996 is used as a proxy for the 1991 data due to the lack of available data for this year.

More than 500 basic variables, referring to all 314 municipalities and to different time periods between 1991 and 2000, were used. These figures indicate the size of the database.

In the aforementioned study, a weighted (a priori) arithmetic average index of partial indicators is developed that expresses the relative standardized position of each local territory, having combined the variability of all variables with a Paasche-type temporal aggregation.

As in Drewnowski (1974).

They also provide software for computing spatial analysis. GWR release 3 is the last version available at the time of writing this paper.