Institutional settings and urban sprawl: Evidence from Europe

Abstract

This article explores the role of institutional settings in determining spatial variation in urban sprawl across Europe. We first synthesize the emerging literature that links land use policies and local fiscal incentives to urban sprawl. Next, we compile a panel dataset on various measures of urban sprawl for European countries using high-resolution satellite images. We document substantial variation in urban sprawl across countries. This variation remains roughly stable over the period of our analysis (1990-2012). Urban sprawl is particularly pronounced in emerging Central and Eastern Europe but is comparatively low in Northern European countries. Urban sprawlespecially outside functional urban areasis strongly negatively associated with real house price growth, suggesting a trade-off between urban containment and housing affordability. Our main novel empirical findings are that decentralization and local political fragmentation are significantly positively associated with urban sprawl. Decentralized countries have a 25 to 30 percent higher sprawl index than centralized ones. This finding is consistent with the proposition that in decentralized countries fiscal incentives at local level may provide strong incentives to permit residential development at the outskirts of existing developments.

How responsive are housing markets in the OECD? National level estimates

“…Poterba (1984[16]) defines housing supply as net residential investment and estimates an asset-market model of the owner-occupied housing market. DiPasquale and Wheaton (1994 [17]) use a stock adjustment model where the housing stock adjusts slowly to changes in demand and stock equilibrium is achieved only in the long run. Overall, while there is quite some variability in the theoretical foundations of empirical models of the housing markets, the estimated equations are not necessarily inconsistent and often quite similar (Annex A).…”

“…Following DiPasquale and Wheaton (1994 [17]), the empirical approach in the present study builds on a stock-flow model of the housing market given by the following two equations:…”

Does Urban Sprawl Inhibit Urban Eco-Efficiency? Empirical Studies of Super-Efficiency and Threshold Regression Models

“…Because the population and industrial areas are often highly concentrated in cities, the rising land rent near a city center will increase the cost of living and working, resulting in expansion from the city center to suburban areas. The structure of the urban space has to be adjusted in such cases [23][24][25]. However, the inefficient and extensive development of land and infrastructure increases the pressure on the soil, water and energy.…”

Visual Analysis of the Height Ratio between Building and Background Vegetation. Two Rural Cases of Study: Spain and Sweden

“…Growing awareness of the recreational potential of rural areas, coinciding with urban sprawl in the late 20th century and with the improvement of communications, has promoted recent human movement from urban to rural areas [93]. Consequently, many such areas in Europe are experiencing a disordered increase in the building of second-residence houses, which is quite often discordant with the local landscape [94,95]. Sweden and Spain share an intermediate place in terms of urban pressure on rural areas in comparison with countries from Central and Eastern Europe, and this circumstance made them suitable for the purpose of the investigation and justified their selection.…”