Publication: Texture and Tractability: The Framework for Spatial Policy Analysis in the World Development Report 2009
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Date
2011
ISSN
17521378
Published
2011
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Development is accompanied by significant spatial transformations--changes in the distribution of people and economic activities. The World Development Report 2009 Reshaping Economic Geography draws lessons from history and academic research to develop a concise framework for understanding these dynamics. This framework makes rigorous spatial policy analysis tractable. But it has been criticize--mostly by geographer--for ignoring the "importance of place." This paper explains why it is necessary to draw out common patterns in the development experience of different countries even if this requires generalization and simplification. Recent applications at the urban, national, and regional level demonstrate how the framework accommodates contextual and place specific information to ensure the relevance of applied policy analysis.
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Publication World Development Report 2009: A Practical Economic Geography(2010)The World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography (WDR 2009) was written to inform policy debates about urbanization, lagging areas, and globalization. During almost two years of consultations and dissemination, the report met with broad acceptance among government officials, development professionals, and researchers. Policymakers grappling with difficult spatial development issues have found the report's analytical framework compelling and its policy guidance useful. An exception to this generally favorable reception has been the reaction from a number of economic geographers. In this article, we respond to criticisms about the report's scope, guiding framework, and policy implications that are emphasized in the accompanying articles in this issue of Economic Geography. In conclusion, we agree with economic geographers such as Rodriguez-Pose who call for critical engagement with the report and with the more detailed follow-up studies that use the WDR 2009's framework. This would both improve the quality of spatial policy advice and increase the visibility of economic geographers in international development debates.Publication Scale Economies and Cities(World Bank, 2010-08-02)This paper summarizes the policy-relevant insights of a generation of research on scale economies. Scale economies in production are of three types: internal economies associated with large plants, localization economies that come from sharing of inputs and infrastructure and from greater competition among firms, and urbanization economies that are generated through diversity and knowledge spillovers. The benefits (and costs) of localization and urbanization are together called “external (dis) economies” because they arise due to factors outside any single household, farm or firm. The empirical literature yields some stylized facts. Internal scale economies are low in light industries and high in heavy industries. External scale economies are amplified by economic density and dissipate with distance from places where economic activity is concentrated. Scale economies are most visibly manifest in towns and cities. To simplify somewhat, towns allow firms and farms to exploit internal scale economies, medium-sized cities help firms in an industry exploit localization economies, and large cities and metropolises provide urbanization economies to those who locate within or nearby. Scale economies have implications for policy makers. The first is that because urban settlements rise and thrive because market agents demand their services, they should be seen as creatures of the market, not creations of the state. The second is that because settlements of different sizes provide differing services, towns, cities, and metropolises are more often complements for one another, not substitutes. Third, as a corollary, policymakers should aim to improve the functioning of urban settlements, and not become preoccupied with their size.Publication Density, Distance and Division : The Case of Chongqing Municipality, China(2011)This paper analyses the empirical relevance of the 2009 World Development Report's 3D framework for the explanation of spatial productivity disparities within Chongqing municipality's non-primary sector. In doing so, it presents evidence of a significant role for distance in determining these disparities, especially within the municipality's Southeast wing. The evidence of a role for density is more mixed, however, with findings of agglomeration economies depending on the method of estimation used. These results have important policy implications both for the municipality itself and China overall.Publication Reshaping Economic Geography : Implications for New EU Member States(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)The ongoing crisis should spur deeper European integration, rather than a return to the nationalism of the past. The World Development Report 2009, reshaping economic geography, spotlights several issues for new European Union (EU) member states. From 1950 to 1990, Eastern Europe was impermeable to the flow of goods, services and ideas from the West, and grew slowly. During the same period, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in fourteen Western European economies grew at three times the pace of Eastern Europe. The drivers of West European growth were market economies, regional cooperation, and global economic integration. The European Economic Community, started by six Western European nations in 1957, continued to increase its membership with the ultimate aim of full economic and monetary integration. After the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, the EU10 countries, along with Malta and Cyprus, joined the expanded European Union, an economic zone based on the principles of democracy, markets and the free mobility of goods, capital and labor. The 27country European Union has a combined population of almost 500 million people and accounts for over 30 percent of the world's GDP. But the legacy of division has meant that the EU10 countries lag considerably behind most of the other member states. While the EU10 have brought 123 million people into the European Union, they have reduced its average level of GDP per capita by an estimated 15.6 percent.Publication Berlin Workshop Series 2009 : Spatial Disparities and Development Policy(World Bank, 2009)The Berlin workshop series 2009 presents a selection of papers from meetings held on September 30-October 2, 2007, at the tenth annual Berlin workshop, jointly organized by InWent-Capacity Building International, Germany, and the World Bank in preparation for the World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) 2009. The workshop brings diverse perspectives from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to exchange ideas and engage in debate relevant to development of the WDR. The report will accordingly have three parts, each describing, explaining, or drawing lessons from the spatial transformations that have been observed in both developed and developing countries. The first section of the report will be factual and present the stylized facts on economic concentration and welfare disparities, for both developing and developed countries, over the last two centuries. The second part of the report will identify the main drivers of these changes, distilling the insights provided by the advances in economic thought over the last two decades. The third section of the report will discuss the policy implications, in essence identifying the public policy priorities that help countries to realize the immediate economic benefits of greater concentration and the social and long-term economic benefits of moderate spatial disparities. In essence, the report will emphasize that neighborhoods are important for development. This is true for cities, for regions, and for countries: it is difficult for a city to prosper in the middle of a squalid countryside, it is difficult for a province to prosper rapidly when other provinces in the country are squalid, and it is difficult for a country to prosper for long when the countries around it are mired in squalor. The report will propose that the solution for cities, regions, and countries is to invest in neighborhoods. The principle is to deepen integration and not to attempt isolation.
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