Between 1950 and 1990, the aggregate population of central cities in the United States declined by 17 percent despite population growth of 72 percent in metropolitan areas as a whole. This paper assesses the extent to which the construction of new limited access highways has contributed to central city population decline. Using planned portions of the interstate highway system as a source of exogenous variation, empirical estimates indicate that one new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent. Estimates imply that aggregate central city population would have grown by about 8 percent had the interstate highway system not been built. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2007.
"Urban growth and transportation,"
Working Papers
tecipa-305, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
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