UTTRI associated faculty Nathaniel Baum-Snow‘s research on highways and suburbanization is featured in “Visualizing the Footprint of Highways in American Cities,” Visual Capitalist, April 4, 2020.
Highways reshaped the downtown cores of six American cities and created new patterns of urban life – Visual Capitalist
The article draws from Baum-Snow’s paper “Did Highways Cause Suburbanization?”
Baum-Snow, Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy at U of T’s Rotman School of Management, comments on his research:
Quantification of how highways have shaped the spatial structure of cities is informative about transport policy for a number of reasons. Such evidence allows us to make predictions about expected causal impacts of new highways that are under consideration for construction. The magnitudes of employment and population responses are additionally informative about welfare consequences. The fact that new highways increase the amount of space on which people can affordably live while reducing commuting times is evidence of positive welfare impacts, at least for some households.
His forthcoming paper, “Urban Transport Expansions and Changes in the Spatial Structure of US Cities: Implications for Productivity and Welfare,” looks jointly at impacts of highways on employment decentralization and thinks through some of the implications.
“Roads, Railroads, and Decentralization of Chinese Cities” explores some similar evidence but for Chinese cities. Baum-Snow also carried out related research on impacts of interregional highways in China on local economic growth, detailed in “Does investment in national highways help or hurt hinterland city growth?”
Looking to the future, he says: “One goal for future research is to better understand the welfare impacts of highways for different income and skill groups while accurately incorporating the deleterious roles of pollution and congestion into the analysis.”
Read “Visualizing the Footprint of Highways in American Cities,” Visual Capitalist, April 4, 2020