Quantifying Agglomeration Productivity Premiums Associated With Spatial Organization In Cities And Across System Of Cities

Scaling framework and models of systems of cities provide a unique approach for unifying the response of cities across a range of characteristics. These models often rely on a network formulation of the interpersonal interactions and the cities’ infrastructure as the underlying mechanism deriving various macro-level behaviours from economic productivity to the cities morphology and the spatial organization of their people, activities, and mobility costs associated with them.

This project focuses on quantifying a sense of productivity premium that may be associated with a change in spatial organization and connectivity of small-area neighborhoods relative to their existing spatial layout. This is achieved by modeling the underlying spatial network within cities based on attractivity of individuals to one another as a function of their average income/qualifications characteristics, their distance, and the ease by which these distances can be traversed.