Carolina Guevara Rosero (p), Daniela Sandoval, Diego del Pozo, Yasmín Salazar, Cristhian Rosales

Izaskun Barba Areso

Spatial disparity across regions might induce migration from left behind regions to more developed ones, which in turn, leads to further spatial disparities in terms of amenities, among other aspects. This study, looking at the Ecuadorian case, aims to construct an amenity index for provinces and for cantons, including eleven dimensions: 1.art, 2. food services, 3. education, 4. entertainment-sports, 5. childcare and eldercare institutions, 6. health, 7. utilities, 8. transport activity, 9. social capital, 10. environment quality and 11. security. Data was collected from two types of data sources, administrative data and surveys, at two geographical levels: provincial and cantonal from 2009 to 2020. To construct the amenity index, principal component analysis (PCA) is conducted in two stages. First, partial indexes for each dimension are obtained and second, using those partial indexes, the global index is constructed. Based on this, we construct 4 amenity indexes: i. provincial amenity index, ii. cantonal amenity index, iii. temporal amenity index of provinces, and iv. temporal amenity index of cantons.
The results of the synthetic indexes vary according to the data analyzed. Thus, the cantonal and the provincial indexes do not reflect the same aspects. At the provincial level, the first component reflects market amenities and environment care whereas at the cantonal level, the first component reflects aspects related to services and quality of life, the soul of cities such as higher education access, selfcare, entertainment and sports, among others. Both first principal components at the provincial and cantonal level are negatively related to public social services, implying that provinces ranked high in the synthetic indexes have a low provision of public social services. The second principal component of the provincial amenity index reflects the infrastructure in health, private higher education, housing and art, whereas the second component at the cantonal level reflect the private health and higher education.
The results of rankings at the provincial and cantonal levels reveal that provinces/cantons record varied positions across dimensions. Thus, in each dimension, different provinces/cantons stand out. However, Galapagos, Pichincha and Pastaza consistently maintained the top places in the ranking of amenities at the provincial level. While these provinces perform well in most of dimensions, they also have shortcomings in other dimensions. When analyzing the temporal evolution of the general index, only 8 provinces out of 24 record position increases across periods and 108 cantons out of 220 record position increases across periods.

Brice Barois (p), Leïly Hassaine-Bau (p)

Carolina Guevara Rosero

The financing system for real estate production and property is evolving. In addition to public funds (state aid for the construction or acquisition of property) and private funds (investors), securitization of real estate involves a new type of financing that participates in several phases, from land transactions to construction and property management.
In the first decade of the 21st century, Mexico underwent institutional reforms that led to the creation of financial entities aimed at raising institutional funds for the real estate market, a rapidly growing sector.
These economic changes are accompanied by spatial changes, which sometimes directly influence them. Many authors have highlighted the growing importance of financial vehicles in the proliferation of large-scale urban projects in Mexico. One of the most representative is the production of a new type of urban project, private mixed-use complexes. These projects go beyond the scale of the neighborhood, concentrating residential and commercial buildings, offices and leisure activities, all within a delimited and secure perimeter aimed at the affluent classes. private mixed-use complexes are not just enclosed residential areas, but spatial entities in their own right. These urban projects represent a significant shift in the logic of the enclosure of the city, now at the meso level, accentuating the spatial inequalities of the territories.
In order to understand the relationships between the actors, the resources mobilized and the resulting urban forms, this thesis is based on a qualitative and quantitative methodology. The study of a database of 77 mixed-use complexes reveals a continuity in the production logic of gated communities, but a break in the scale and urban form they imply and in their location. Built in the most affluent areas of Mexico's cities, these financial investments benefit the economic centers of the country's metropolises. The study also focuses on the level of individuals who are involved in major projects on a daily basis: managers of investment funds and large companies, elected representatives and local residents. Mixed-use complexes are emerging as a tool and support for financial development, reinforcing the socio-spatial polarity of metropolises.
The results show the changing production of Mexico’s cities and how it affects its socio-spatial organization. The mixed-use complexes, used as a legal tool to privatize the management of the city and to select the users, illustrates the evolution of segregation at the meso-level, which also crystallizes the challenges of producing the city of the future.

Izaskun Barba Areso (p), Vicente Ríos, Lisa Gianmoena

Brice Barois

Women have made significant progress in gaining representation in political decision-making bodies over the last decades. This increased political power for women has sparked academic interest in examining its effects on social spending, economic development and income inequality, and the quality of the institutions and corruption, among other topics. Moreover, with its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals, women’s political empowerment seems to be of high priority in international development cooperation. While consequences of women’s political empowerment (WPE) have been amply investigated, studies examining its spatial and temporal dependencies are still scarce. The idea that inclusive institutions in countries develop in isolation is unrealistic given the contemporary landscape of growing policy interdependence and globalization across cultural, social, and economic spheres.
Considering this, our paper examines the influence of spillovers on the diffusion of WPE across 140 countries from 1990 to 2022. To that end, the analysis utilizes a dynamic spatial panel data econometric approach, incorporating common factors. For the correct identification of cross-country spillovers, we control for the possibility of common factors since interdependence in political empowerment could be due to common factors or aggregate shocks that affect different units differently. In addition, we employ a hybrid spatial weights matrix which is created by combining different concepts of proximity other than geographical distance that may affect the spatial distribution of women’s political empowerment. Our results reveal that WPE in a country has a positive and statistically significant effect on its neighbors, which highlights the relevance of spatial effects in this context. Finally, we employ a Spatial Bayesian Model Averaging (SBMA) analysis to verify which the robust set of time invariant socioeconomic factors driving the observed spatial spillovers and levels of women’s political empowerment.