Urban Gradient Over Time: When Population Experiences a Shock

Abstract

This study proposes an empirical analysis to assess the changes recorded by the urban gradient when population size suffers from an important and unexpected shock. To this end, we build an original pseudo-panel covering information for the city of Barcelona from 1902 to 2011. Despite the prediction of canonical theoretical models for monocentric cities, our results identify an increase in the size of the urban gradient due to the reinforcement of the attractiveness of the central business district (CBD) during the period of expansion of the population mostly led by the high-skill and immigrant communities.

Keywords: Urban structure, distance, Central Business District (CBD)

JEL Classification: R14, R30, R40