Eduardo Moreira Thomé (p), Alexandre Alves Porsse

Roberto Basile

Several studies have been developed to assess the presence of polycentric cities analyzing the spatial distribution of employment into urban space. Most of these studies are concerned to cites in developed countries and few have explored the polycentric urban structure of cities in developing countries, particularly to Latin America. This paper aims to assess the presence of employment subcenters in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. Since the 70’s Curitiba adopted a TOD oriented urban planning policy searching to promote polycentricity. The core of this policy is the BRT network which was established over the last seven decades and is the main force influencing distribution of economic activities and people across the city. We use the semi-parametric approach developed by McMillen (2001) to identify the polycentric structure of employment in Curitiba. The employment database contains formal employment data at the firm level provided by the Ministry of Employment for the year of 2010, representing 50,553 firms and 658,937 employees in the city. These data were georeferenced in grid cells of 1 square mile over the city. The preliminary results show that Curitiba has a polycentric structure organized in nine employment subcenters. The spatial distribution of these subcenters is highly correlated to the BRT network, evidencing the role of TOD urban planning policy in shaping the polycentric structure.

Büşra Gezer (p), Ferhan Gezici Korten

Roberto Basile

In light of developed and developing countries literature about 'second-tier city' concept, Turkey's potential second-tier cities will be determined among 81 cities depending on the performance changes in 'demographic and economic growth' and 'social, physical and institutional development' in this study. For this aim, an inductive method is adopted which depends on the respectively forming research problem, research questions and hypotheses and testing hypothesis with two-step cluster analysis. In cluster analysis, the number of cluster is defined as '8'. Thus Turkey's 81 cities are divided into eight separate cluster for each year according to the proximity of performance to each other and related cluster centers in the above-mentioned categories. The cluster analysis which will allow the determination of Turkey's potential second-tier cities through performance change depends will conduct between 2007 and 2017. Afterwards, the performance changes of the second-tier cities will be examined in two different periods in the same period. The first period subject to the examination of performance change is the crisis period, the second is the post-crisis period. In addition, in the cluster analysis both for the determination of second-tier cities and for the examination of their performance changes, year of 2010 when Turkey's economy was in welfare and balance will be chosen base year. The reason for this is to avoid misleading effects of crisis years on results. Thus, performance changes of the cities will be examined by going to the years after base year and by going to the previous years. After identification of Turkey's potential second-tier cities and explanation of potential changes in their performance, growth and development dynamics of the cities will be investigated. Finally, in the conclusion section of study, the policies for second-tier cities in the literature will be examined together with the prominent policies within the scope of this study.

Kathrin Schulze (p)

Roberto Basile

Demographic change can be regarded as one of the most pressing problems of developed countries. As a consequence, Germany is challenged by population aging, being one of the oldest countries worldwide. This trend does not only cause increased pressure on social security systems, but also affects labor markets by means of a persistently aging and retiring workforce. Evaluating the limited number of possible counteracting measures, an increasing labor supply of underrepresented groups is among the most promising approaches. In light of this, our paper deals with the question whether or not females increase their labor supply in an aging society using small-scale regional data. Since investigations of the exact mechanisms behind this relationship are relatively scarce, we try to evaluate whether there are heterogeneous effects for different skill levels. Our fist results show that the old-age dependency ratio indeed has a positive effect on female labor force participation, indicating that women might serve as a general factor attenuating labor market effects of an aging society. Women at the lower end of the skill-distribution might particularly fill in vacancies or take on jobs emerging in the health and care sector.