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Roads, Railroads, and Decentralization of Chinese Cities

Nathaniel Baum-Snow1; Loren Brandt1; J. Vernon Henderson2; Matthew A. Turner3; Qinghua Zhang4

1 University of Toronto · 2 London School of Economics · 3 Brown University · 4 Peking University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2017 open access

We investigate how urban railroad and highway configurations have influenced urban form in Chinese cities since 1990. Each radial highway displaces 4% of central city population to surrounding regions, and ring roads displace about an additional 20%, with stronger effects in the richer coastal and central regions. Each radial railroad reduces central city industrial GDP by about 20%, with ring roads displacing an additional 50%. We provide evidence that radial highways decentralize service sector activity, radial railroads decentralize industrial activity, and ring roads decentralize both. Historical transportation infrastructure provides identifying variation in more recent measures of infrastructure.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_00660
Volume
99 (3)
Pages
435-448
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
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