Urban Economics
Urban economics is a research field that focus on how households, firms, and capital integrate across space in metropolitan areas. Digitalisation, globalisation and educational upgrading have, for many, led to increased wages, less routine work, and, over all, increased wealth. There are also less desirable outcomes, such as divergence between urban and rural locations, labour market polarisations and increased inequality within countries. Changes in the occupational structure caused by adopting new technologies seems to have reinforced existing spatial inequality. New jobs are created in cities with high concentration of highly-skilled workers, while locations with low density of high-skilled workers experience job losses. Despite modern information technologies, firms choose to locate close to other firms and customers. This concentration of economic activity poses challenges on all kinds of functionalities in cities, as well as in rural areas. It affects housing, physical infrastructure as well as public services. An important aspect of this is that scarcity of land tends to increase land rent, and thereby posing a great challenge to e.g. the provision of affordable housing. There are also new patterns emerging with economic growth concentrated to some large urban areas, resulting in increasing spatial inequality. While these issues have gained increased interest in recent years, researchers still know little about the impact of the supply of land on urban and regional economics and for different socioeconomic groups. What are the socio-economic effects of new infrastructure? How patterns of regional inequality influence the interrelation of housing, labour market and mobility? How these trends influence the spatial interaction between households and firms?
Research Projects
Land Value Capture as a Model for Financing Public Transit Infrastructure in Sweden: Conditions and Implications
- 2018 - 2019
- Lina Olsson , Helena Bohman
The purpose of this research project is to generate new knowledge on the conditions and consequences of applying land value capture (LVC) as a model for part funding public transit infrastructure in Sweden. While international research indicates both potentials and risks with LVC, research on LVC in the Swedish context is currently very limited. This […]
Persistent unemployment on local labour markets and local development
- 2017 - 2018
- Helena Bohman , Magnus Andersson
Persistent and high local unemployment is a major problem all over the world. In transition processes regions develop diversely, resulting in increasing unemployment in some regions and decreasing in others. In neoclassical theory this will even out over time, due to wage differentials and mobility. In real life, however, regional differences often remain, due to, […]
Shifting conceptualisations of property in Sweden
- 2017 - 2020
- Peter Parker , Hoai Anh Tran , Karin Grundström
In the research platform Shifting conceptions of property in Sweden we will explore how different conceptions of property underpin legal debates, planning negotiations, and practices in daily life. The platforms also explores how these shifts conceptions shift and underpin a re-shaping of the urban environment. The research is inherently multidisciplinary.
SAAREL – Spatial Analysis of Accessibility, Real Estate and Labour Market
- 2017 - 2020
- Désirée Nilsson , Helena Bohman , Magnus Andersson
The global purpose of this research platform is the understanding of the relationships between different aspects influencing the real estate sector by utilizing novel data sources on old and new research questions as a way to develop knowledge. In other words, it aims to observe, quantify and model the effects of e.g. land use, labour […]
