Falling commuting costs, amenity advantages, and suburbanization

摘要

The goal of this paper is to understand the direct and indirect effects (through impacting the quantity and quality of local public good in the communities) of falling commuting costs (per unit of distance) on suburbanization. A simple model for a monocentric metropolitan area with multiple communities is developed. It is found that whether decreases in commuting costs promote suburbanization or not depends on each community's quantity and quality of local public good, distance from the central business district, and income distribution of the residents within and across communities. Sufficient conditions for decreases in commuting costs to promote residential decentralization and those for centralization are identified, respectively.