Why did Highways Cause Suburbanization? The Role of Highway Congestion

Congestion is a large problem in metropolitan areas. This paper provides a theoretical and empirical framework that can analyze whether congestion on commuting affects residential and workplace choice in metropolitan areas. First, we develop a quantitative urban model with congestion, to illustrate how congestion affects the worker location choices of residence and workplace. This model indicates that congestion on commuting causes population and employment suburbanization.To examine the validity of the model, we use partial identification with data on central cities in US from 1950 to 1990. The empirical results show that the model with congestion is evidenced by the data on all cities. By contrast, the model without congestion is not valid the data on congested central city