Urbanisation in developing countries
Economic growth and urbanisation go hand-in-hand and are critical to poverty reduction in a country.
Ultimately, cities provide both the lived environment and the work environment for most people in high- and middle-income countries and escalating numbers in low-income ones. Cities have the potential to reap major economies of scale and scope. But the gains from urbanisation are not automatic. Urbanisation requires three distinct investment processes: public investment in infrastructure, enterprise investment in productive capital, and household investment in housing and human capital.
It also requires institution reforms in land markets, to ensure private investments are protected from expropriation and can be financed and insured. The program studies the building of cities, the role of land and housing market institutions, and the role of infrastructure investments in the development of liveable and productive cities. It studies the geography of development, the growth of individual cities and the development of a system of cities as part of the urbanisation process and economic growth, as influenced by infrastructure investment, climate change, and national policies affecting land and capital markets.
Featured Work
Urbanisation in developing countries publications
Priya Manwaring and Tanner Regan
29 August 2023
Stephan Heblich, Stephen J. Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth
20 June 2023
Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Loren Brandt, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew A. Turner and Qinghua Zhang
1 January 2020
J. Vernon Henderson and Sebastian Kriticos
2 August 2018
Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch
1 February 2018
J. Vernon Henderson, Tim Squires, Adam Storeygard and David Weil
1 February 2018
Neeraj Baruah, Amanda Dahlstrand, Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch and Tanner Regan
27 September 2017
Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Loren Brandt, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew A. Turner and Qinghua Zhang
8 June 2016
J. Vernon Henderson, Anthony J. Venables, Tanner Regan and Ilia Samsonov
20 May 2016
Henry G. Overman and Anthony J. Venables
28 October 2010