What is Different About Urbanization in Rich and Poor Countries? Cities in Brazil, China, India and the United States

Abstract

Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and India look quite different. In Brazil and China, the implications of the spatial equilibrium hypothesis, the central organizing idea of urban economics, are not rejected. The India data, however, repeatedly rejects tests inspired by the spatial equilibrium assumption. One hypothesis is that the spatial equilibrium only emerges with economic development, as markets replace social relationships and as human capital spreads more widely. In all four countries there is strong evidence of agglomeration economies and human capital externalities. The correlation between density and earnings is stronger in both China and India than in the U.S., strongest in China. In India the gap between urban and rural wages is huge, but the correlation between city size and earnings is modest. The cross-sectional relationship between area-level skills and both earnings and area-level growth are also stronger in the developing world than in the U.S. The forces that drive urban success seem similar in the rich and poor world, even if limited migration and difficult housing markets make it harder for a spatial equilibrium to develop.

Property Rights Reform to Support China's Rural–Urban Integration: Village‐Level Evidence from the Chengdu Experiment

“…The ability of cities to capitalize on positive externalities from skills agglomeration and spatial proximity has historically made urbanization a driver of economic growth (Glaeser, 2011). Yet the global surge in urbanization has called attention to the need for policies to ensure that urban growth is sustainable and keeps cities economically competitive (Chauvin et al, 2017). In China, policy-induced imperfections in land and labour markets have long been recognized as affecting the amount and nature of land conversion and rural-urban migration in ways that may be unsustainable, widen rural-urban inequality, and reduce China's competitiveness (Wen and Xiong, 2014).…”

Spatial mismatch, wages and unemployment in metropolitan areas in Brazil

“…More than 90% of the GDP is created in cities (Da Mata et al 2007). However, this process was not accompanied by a similar rise in the country's GDP per capita (Chauvin et al 2016). Urban areas with less than 100,000 inhabitants made up 23% of the Brazilian population in 2010, while in the US, they housed 33% of the population.…”

Decomposition and Decoupling Analysis of Life-Cycle Carbon Emission in China’s Building Sector

“…Even more, China's urbanization is projected to be accelerating in the future [11][12][13]. The accelerating urbanization will lead to a rapid growth of energy usage and material consumption, and a commensurate increase in carbon emission, which means carbon emission from building industry will become more important source of China's total carbon emission.…”

“…Finally, we assess the decoupling status between economic output and carbon emission in China's building industry, using Tapio method and decoupling effort index. Given that many developing countries have experienced, or will experience urbanization, which lead to building industry booming, and a commensurate rapidly increase in carbon emission [12,35], our work would bring some implications for carbon emission of building industry in some other developing countries. Further promote the reform of wall materials and promote energy-efficient construction, effective protection of arable land and energy conservation.…”