The Political Geography of Cities

Decentralizing Development: Evidence from Government Splits

“…In Panel (d), we find that our estimates remain the same when measuring luminosity outside a radius of 5km around the town hall. This suggests luminosity growth is spread out and not driven by the main urban area within the new municipality (Bluhm et al, 2023). We find little significant changes in the intensive margin for the remaining districts.…”

“…Related to the public sector, our context suggests that administrative remoteness and neglect from the headquarters regions correlate with regional inequality, and that splitting mitigates these frictions and generates subsequent positive and persistent economic consequences to peripheral regions. These findings are also related to the literature studying how geographical isolation and size affect state capacity and development (Ashraf et al, 2010;Stasavage, 2010;Nunn and Puga, 2012;Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2014;Campante et al, 2019;Chambru et al, 2021;Bai and Jia, 2023;Bluhm et al, 2023). We advance this literature by evaluating the implications of reducing administrative remoteness through splitting for local governments.…”

“…We uncover relevant distributional impacts: The increase in luminosity is concentrated in districts that applied to split, whereas the remaining districts are little affected. Within applicant districts, the increase is not exclusively concentrated in the main urban area (Bluhm et al, 2023).…”

Losing Territory: The Effect of Administrative Splits on Land Use in the Tropics

“…The creation of new political centers. Existing literature suggests that when cities become administrative capitals, this induces significant economic growth and an expansion of urban settlements (Bluhm et al, 2021). While the mother district's capital retains its role in the process of jurisdictional splits, a new capital with all its relevant institutions has to be formed in the child district.…”