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US post-war suburbanization has reshaped the spatial pattern of growth in many metropolitan areas, with population and employment shift toward the suburbs resulting in the urban decay of central cities. This being the case, the adoption of adequate anti-sprawl policies should lead to a reduction in city blight. Availability of detailed blight measures at the city level enables us to undertake a novel empirical analysis to test this hypothesis. The empirical specification presented here identifies the specific impact of more stringent anti-sprawl policies adopted at the metro-level, proxied by the adoption of urban containment policies, on city blight. Results indicate that the adoption of such policies have effectively contributed to the reduction of downtown deterioration.

Urban sprawl has recently become a matter of concern throughout Europe, but it is in southern countries where its environmental and economic impact has been most severe. This lowdensity, spatially expansive urban development pattern can have a highly marked impact on municipal budgets. Thus, local governments may see sprawl as a potential source of finance, in terms of buildingassociated revenues and increased transfers from upper tiers of government. At the same time, sprawl leads to increased levels of expenditure, as it may raise the provision costs of certain local public goods and requires greater investment in extending basic infrastructure for new urban development. What, therefore, is the net fiscal impact of urban sprawl? Do local governments consider the long-run net fiscal impact of new urban growth or do they simply focus on its short-term benefits, ignoring future development costs? This paper addresses these questions by analysing the dynamic relationship between urban sprawl and local budget variables. .

This resource describes a data source for local personal income and its distribution in Spanish municipalities.

This paper explores the presence of local spatial interaction on urban development patterns of Spanish urban areas and whether this interaction might be due to the strategic behaviour of neighbouring local governments. Using remote-sensing data from aerial photography and satellite imaging along with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques, it studies urban development patterns across the country with unprecedented detail. The results confirm the main hypothesis that spatial interaction exists in the levels of sprawl between neighbouring municipalities, suggesting that local governments do indeed compete for the creation of new suburban settlement developments, hence promoting excessive urban sprawl.