Toshiharu Ishikawa (p)

see extended abstract

Louafi Bouzouina, Ayana Lamatkhanova (p), Ioannis Baraklianos

In this paper, we study the impact of a French sensitive urban zones—the “Zones Urbaines Sensibles” (ZUS)—on economic activities’ location decisions. The low income level and insufficient motorisation rate of residents reduce the accessibility to jobs, to public equipments and to retail stores. The reputation of a disadvantaged neighbourhood may provoke some economic sectors to avoid those districts during the location choice while the incentive program aiming the sensitive urban zones may attract other activities to install and to maintain some of the existing ones in sensitive urban zones. Our empirical analysis is based on a micro-geographic data set which provides exhaustive information on the location of establishments in France for the 2018 year at the census block level. We use a discrete choice modelling approach using a multinomial logit to estimate the location choice of an establishment conditioning to different explanatory variables. The fine area unit IRIS (‘aggregated units for statistical information’) is used to this analysis where we distinguish the IRIS unit with ZUS, IRIS unit without ZUS and IRIS areas surrounding ZUS. We also bring the attention to the distinction for the type of activity in order to underline the differences between back-office and front-office establishments. These establishments do not have the same requirements for their location during the decision making process as they search.

Désirée Nilsson (p)

Public transport is often discussed as having a structuring effect on land use in cities and spatial interaction and development (Bjerkemo, 2011). Investment in infrastructure also influence how business organise production, distribution and location decisions (Holl, 2006). Rail infrastructure usually has more impact on surrounding society than other transit systems. The purpose in this paper is to study if new centrally located railway infrastructure influence location decisions of business and in such case what type of business is more attracted to train stations? Chatman & Noland (2011) provides a theoretical discussion on how public transport improvements can have an impact on productivity. Mejia-dorantes, Paez, & Manuel (2012) studies the impact of public transport infrastructure and finds that urban accessibility is related to economic activity.
The case studied is Malmö city tunnel, which opened in 2010. Two new city stations opened, which connect to the old city station. The three stations have different attributes, one station was built on undeveloped land and the other in parts of the city which already had a built environment with established businesses. The original city station was changed to a through station, with easier access to other parts of the city. Data used for analysing spatial changes of business is a micro-level data base where business sector is identified as well as employee educational level and other business characteristic.