URBAN ECONOMICS

Urban economics is a branch of economics which stemmed from microeconomics in the 1940s and combined knowledge in this field and geography. This branch of economics addresses the issue of urbanization and formation of cities based on the theory of agglomeration and individual’s housing location decision. By understanding that underlying mechanism, one can explore other prominent issues often tied to urban development such as transportation, housing, and employment. There might exist a misunderstanding of the notion of urban economics, a number of people likened it to economic activities in an urban context. This misunderstanding or interpretation of urban economics has been somewhat common in Vietnam as the Vietnamese language does not distinguish economics from economy.

Urban economics has had different theoretical and applied development stages and centers, and was developed mainly in North America and Europe. In recent years, issues of interest to scholars in the field include agglomeration/clustering and economic efficiency due to the clustering of economic activity, and knowledge spillover, urbanization, and the distribution of labor and employment. Scholars from East Asia and Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Vietnam have also been interested in this field since the 2000s.