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This report examines the changes that might result from the large-scale uptake of a shared and self-driving fleet of vehicles in a mid-sized European city. The study explores two different self-driving vehicle concepts, for which we have coined the terms “TaxiBot” and “AutoVot”. TaxiBots are self-driving cars that can be shared simultaneously by several passengers. AutoVots pick-up and drop-off single passengers sequentially.

Tokyo is well known as a rail-oriented city where the huge traffic demand generated from the megacity is well supported by a sophisticated urban rail system. The results of the 2008 Person Trip Survey show that rail’s modal share was 30% as of 2008; the economy of Tokyo is highly dependent on an efficient urban rail network. As shown in Kato (2014), Tokyo’s urban rail market has unique characteristics: private rail companies provide many of the rail services, the rail network was developed under the guidance of the central government, rail users suffered from chronic traffic congestion for many years, and the rail market has recently been significantly influenced by a rapidly aging demographic. In spite of its uniqueness, the experiences of urban rail development in Tokyo could be useful for other OECD member countries.

This paper presents an analysis of urban spatial structure and its trends in the OECD between 2001 and 2011. It does so by using a standardised definition of urban areas in 29 OECD countries as composed of high density cores and their respective commuting zones. While urban population is growing everywhere, the way in which populations locate throughout the urban space differs across OECD cities and countries. The prevalent trend is an increasing dispersion of the population, with growth taking place outside existing centres. However, in specific countries, there are cities experiencing a higher growth in their central cores, while others are strengthening their polycentric structures. Overall, the population has grown more in relatively low-density locations close to the main centre, but outside it. Closeness to sub-centres also proves to be a strong advantage for growth and suggests the emergence of new centralities shaping urban spatial structures.

This working paper is one in a series of OECD Working Papers on Regional Development of the OECD Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate, conducted under the responsibility of Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Head of the OECD Regional Competitiveness and Governance Division (www.oecd.org/regionaldevelopment).

China has become the world’s largest urban nation, with over 600 million urban citizens today. Projections indicate that this level may reach 900 million in 2030. The way this urbanisation process is managed will have important policy implications for China and beyond. This paper provides an introduction to urban trends and policies in China. It describes urban growth trends, where and in what kinds of cities growth is occurring, how China’s cities are governed, and how public policy has influenced the extent, pace, and spatial distribution of urbanisation. As China continues to integrate with the globalising economy, its competitiveness will increasingly be driven by the capacities of its metropolitan regions to improve the productivity of enterprises in ever-widening supply chains. The report concludes with a description of some of the key policy challenges facing central and local urban governments in this global context, including: 1) institutional constraints to markets and factor mobility; 2) environmental challenges; 3) ensuring equity and helping vulnerable groups; and 4) metropolitan governance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in the way people work, with an increasing number of individuals opting to work from home. Fewer commutes allow people to live further away from the city centre, where jobs typically concentrate. Against this background, this paper tests the hypothesis of a shift in housing demand away from the city centre towards the suburbs using a novel granular house price data set covering 16 OECD countries. The results indicate a flattening of the house price gradients in most large urban areas with profound consequences for housing policies and the city of the future.

The objective of this paper is to better understand how the population growth rates of rural regions are affected by their closeness to urban regions and by the economic performance of the latter. By means of a cross-sectional analysis of OECD TL3 regions, it identifies the growth spillover effects from the net effect of distance to non-rural places. Distance-based measures are used to approximate the extent to which urban and rural areas are integrated in relational terms. Results shows that positive growth spillovers exist, suggesting that spread effects overcome backwash effects and thus that rural regions benefit from the growth process taking place in urban and intermediate regions. After having controlled for these growth spillovers, the distance from urban and intermediate regions has a negative effect on the population growth rate of rural regions. Nevertheless, both the strength of this effect and the growth spillovers decay with distance. Results further suggest that proximity to urban areas has higher positive influence than to intermediate areas.

This working paper assesses national policy and governance mechanisms that can influence green growth in Chinese cities. It applies the OECD conceptual framework for urban green growth to examine the potential challenges and opportunities for increasing economic growth through reducing the environmental impact of urban land use, transport and buildings; through improving water and air quality; and through fostering supply and demand of green products and services. The paper first situates the issue of green growth within the nexus of urbanisation and environmental challenges now facing China. This is followed by a review of environmental and quality of life challenges posed by rapid urbanisation. Opportunities for national policies to influence green growth in four key urban policy sectors are then examined. The paper concludes with an assessment of governance challenges and considers potential changes to facilitate economic growth while reducing the environmental impact of cities.

This brief presents a factual and retrospective analysis of the relationships between urbanisation and demography in North Africa and West Africa. It shows that the process of demographic transition is now fully underway in this region. North of the Sahara the new demographic equilibrium features a birth rate higher than expected, according to theoretical model predictions, resulting in continuous population growth. Over 70% of the population now lives in cities, a number that is expected to continue to rise in the coming decades. South of the Sahara all countries have seen death rates plummet, followed by a decrease in birth rates. The gap between the change in the two variables has contributed to spectacular natural growth in the space of a few decades. This growth is occurring in parallel with a redistribution of populations to urban areas, which are now home to close to one of every two inhabitants. West African urbanisation is likely to accelerate the social, economic and political changes that favour the demographic transition. One of the main challenges facing the region is the question of how to reduce the regional variations seen in fertility rates between the continent’s urban and rural areas.

This paper guides transport planners in making the best use of mobile phone traces, derived either from mobile network data or from smartphone app data. It suggests combining such new data sources with conventional travel surveys whose sample size and cost could ultimately be reduced. In the context of a rapidly evolving mobility landscape, with new modes and new services available, big data can help monitor behaviour change, learn from quasi-experiments and develop next-generation travel demand modelling tools.

This paper reviewed current discounting practice in the OECD. It found a wide variance in guidance across countries (which may or may not be justifiable by different economic conditions), and significant differences in guidance within countries. Furthermore, even when discounting guidance is specified, it is not always followed in practice.
A clear conclusion from this study is the allocation of public funds would be substantially improved if OECD countries provided departments with a consistent set of guidance on discounting. This guidance should provide for the analysis of long-term projects, programmes and policies, which are increasingly important, particularly with respect to environmental concerns. Finally, guidance should incorporate advances in theory of discounting under long-term uncertainty. A recipe for determining the appropriate rate of decline in the discount rate is included in this paper.

Transport planners see an opportunity in mobile phone data to better map trip destinations and monitor travel demand over time. However, such data require extensive processing to reveal trip details and transport modes. This paper defines quality indicators for reliable trip data collection and examines sensitivity to key parameters. It compares the trip matrices resulting from mobile network data with independent sources. This paper concludes on the strengths and weaknesses of such data in various transport planning tasks.

The decision to exclude an economic operator from participation in a public procurement procedure is a serious one. The impact on the economic operator is potentially significant. The inappropriate exclusion of an economic operator can also adversely affect competition and have an impact on value-for-money outcomes for the contracting authority. SIGMA Brief 24 focuses on the issue of whether it is permitted under EU law to use an official automatic exclusion list for reasons related to prior contract performance, especially in the light of the newest judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union (case C 465/11). In the context of the Brief, the term “official automatic exclusion list” means a centrally administered and published list of economic operators that are excluded from tendering for public procurement contracts.

Japan’s SME policies have reached a turning point. The traditional policy of “lifting up SMEs” has been changed into a more pro-competitive policy to foster entrepreneurship and innovation in SMEs. This paper evaluates this policy and the new innovation promotion schemes initiated by METI through an examination of plant-level micro data. Longitudinal micro-data from the Census of Manufacturing are linked to the list of firms participating in SME innovation policy schemes under the Law on Creative Activities in SMEs and the Law on Supporting Business Innovation in SMEs. The plant-level pattern of industrial dynamics suggests that both policies for new business start-ups and for innovation creation in existing firms are important. In addition, positive effects on sales growth are observed for firms that participate in the programme on Creative Activity Laws ...

This is the first time that the topic of school grounds has been selected for an OECD seminar in the Programme on Educational Building (PEB). Indeed, it is probably the first time that an international event has been wholly devoted to this important area...