[sustran] more on agglomeration re. Hook's review of Driving Forces-further thoughts

[Eric Bruun]

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, ITDP wrote:

> I finally had a look at james Dunn's book, Driving Forces.
> 
  [snip]
> 
> c. point that urban dispersal may have lowered housing costs is possible
> and deserves to be addressed.  Certainly japan which is the most public
> transit dependent OECD country also has the highest housing prices among
> OECD countries.  this really needs to be addressed by us.  I've been
> arguing that land rents (capturing agglomeration economies) are not
> equivalent to transport costs from a growth perspective (land rent is
> profit, and hence savings/investment, while transport costs are
> 'consumption).  Public policies encouraging higher density investment
> into the built environment making possible agglomeration economies
> should be explored by us as well as growth controls.
> 
   The Dennis Agreement from 1992 for the Stockholm region explicitly used
  agglomeration as a justification to improve the transport system.
  There were some interesting plots of GRP versus density and other
materials in this report. Unfortunately, I do not have an electronic
version or I would post parts of it.

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