An overview of the urban economy and the process of its development
Cities were always the center of wealth and power, innovation and creativity, and dynamism and prosperity.
These complex phenomena, which have developed throughout the history and across the geography, had several aspects and dimensions and now, in the urbanization era, urban development and relevant issues has been changed into one of the basic problems of the current millennium. Economy has been always in the focus of relevant issues to the formation of cities and their developments, but the late decade’s urbanization problems and particularly after 1950s, has led the formation a relatively new field of urban economy. Urban economy studies urban areas in an economic manner and it uses economics instruments to analyze the issues related to urban land use, urban housing, urban transport, infrastructures and urban facilities, urban finance and even social-economic problems like urban poverty and suburbanization and also newer ones such as urban labor market, urban pollution and urban crimes.
Urban economy, whether we consider it as microeconomics in which it is studied the atmosphere structure of city and switching the location of households and financial institutions or consider it like economics having three main fields; political economics or development economics, macroeconomics and microeconomics, has experiences ups and downs and developments from the aspect of subject and the study of problems and also methodology. Although there are issues related to city like land use and urban embezzlement in the works of economists, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, only it is by Prussian economist’s (Johann Heinrich Von Thunen) pioneer theory (1826) called “Isolated States” that modern theories of land use and urban economics have been started. Contrary to the Ricardo’s idea, which he considers the embezzlement of agriculture land as a result of the difference in productivity, he emphasizes on the location difference and he puts the transport factor in the center of his theory. Thunen’s theory was ignored about one century by economists, since area attitude was downgraded by Alfred Marshal (1842), Bleicher (1892) and other neoclassical economists. But urban problems after World War II attracted the attention of economists to the fundamental basis of urban economics including Thune n’s theory. Following the innovative work of Walter Isard (1956) entitled “position and area economics” Martin Beckmann (1957), Lowdon Wingo (1961), William Alonso (1964) succeeded to generalize the basic concept of Fen Thune n’s and utilize it in urban field. The work of Bleicher about Frankfurt, which it was the beginning of experimental researches about space distribution of population in city on the basis of the value of land, was followed by Stewart (1947), who designed the model of population density dependence to the distance to the downtown, and Colin Clark (1951), who proposed Clark negative exponential function. In the same way, Robert Haig’ theory (1926) in the case of spatial balance in city was continued by Herbert Mohring (1961) and Ladon Wingo (1961). Since then encouraging and influential researches were accomplished in the urban economics field. Among them compilations of Muth (1969), Mills (1972), Henderson (1977), Kanemoto (1980), Miyao (1981), Fujita (1990) can be noted as the most prominent works. Thus, the subject and center of urban economics studies has modified parallel with these change of attitudes, and it stretches from Thunens’ agriculture city and uniform plain to complex explanations in the fields such as analysis of spatial structure of cities and their sizes, economics of urban housing, urban transport, localizations, urban finance, urban facilities and infrastructures, issues and problems of world metropolises in developing countries, urban crisis, quality measurement of urban life, world economics of cities.
Following this evolution and development, urban economics has found institutional and organizational aspects in addition to scientific and theoretical mode, and urban economics scientific associations in the world, and particularly in academia environments, were established, among them the Association of Real Estates and Urban Economics of America can be noted which it started by nearly 20 interested university researchers in 1964 and it changed to an valid international association in the field of housing and urban economics and researchers quickly and their researchers employed in governmental and large industrial companies. Journal of this association published for the first time in 1973 entitled “Real Estate Economics” and currently it has international validity as the oldest academic magazine in the field of real estates and economic studies of city. Today, a lot of scientific associations and international institutes are active in the field of urban economics all over the world. Also, IUESA in Iran, considering and analyzing strengths and weaknesses these associations and aware of their scientific and training basics, has started its activity in the theoretical, practical and operational levels on a massive scale since 2011 and has taken important steps in the fields of urban economics, urban sustainable development, urban management and development of its human sources, citizenship participation, urban capital, urban finance, urban sustainable revenue, urban housing, urban security, urban tourism, green economy, urban symbolism and many other subjects parallel with theorizing experiences of urban management, defining and scrutinizing scientific foundations in this field and it has been responsible for scientific, training, researching, developmental in the field of urban economics hopefully and determinedly to farther horizons which it has designed for itself and takes steps along with scientific rapid pace of Iran to achieve an international valid and respected high position.
It is obvious that this ambitious approach and fulfillment of this promising future needs high ambition, honest effort, creativity, collective thinking, perseverance, self-esteem, faith and certainty. Also, constructive, compassionate and helpful criticism and cooperation of sympathetic, punctilious and thoughtful critics with scientific insight and sincerity would help us in this way.
Sources:
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen (2013), Human Resources Management in Municipalities, published by Kouhsar
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen (2013), Urban Symbolization; instrument to improve urban economics, special edition of the 3rd festival of Brand in Tourism
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen, (2012), Economic Instruments in Environment Management and Urban Sustainable Development, the international quarterly journal of Urban Economics
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen, (2012), the effect of absorbing domestic and foreign investors and public participation on sustainable development, the quarterly journal of urban economics No. 15
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen, (2010), the effect of ecotourism on the development of tourism economy of Tehran, the quarterly journal of urban economics, special edition No. 1
· Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein; Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen, (2011), green economy, a strategy to sustainable development, a quarterly journal of sciences and environment technology No. 1
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· Athari, Kamal, (2010) Urban Economics and economy of city in Iran, the quarterly journal of Urban Economics No.1
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· Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, Seyyed Mohsen, Mohammadpour Zarandi, Hossein, Alizadeh Mehdi (2013). an exploration in to improvement of trust strategies in urban administration an Tehran citizens