An increasing amount of empirical evidence documents that city-size distribution within a country follows a power law, often in the form of Zipf’s law. This paper provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution across OECD countries. It uses a database where urban agglomerations...

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits based on city productivity differentials across five OECD countries (Germany, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States). It highlights the relationship between cities’ governmental fragmentation and productivity, and represents the first...

Contemporary urban systems in OECD countries are structured around functional regions, which often overcome established city boundaries. Reading space in terms of functional regions allows assessing changes in urban hierarchies and spatial structures, including the polycentricity of urban...

This paper applies the OECD-EU methodology to identify the functional urban areas (FUAs) in Colombia. Using the municipal boundaries, population grid data and inter-municipalities commuting flows from the 2005 population census, the paper identifies 53 FUAs accounting for 27 million people, or...

This study approaches the question whether it “pays” to live in big(ger) cities in a three-fold manner: first, it estimates how city size affects worker productivity (agglomeration benefits) in Germany, based on individual-level wage data. Second, it considers whether productivity benefits...

This working paper assesses opportunities and policies for green growth in the Chicago Tri-State Metropolitan Area. It first examines the Chicago metro-region's economic and environmental performance and potential constraints to regional growth, and identifies emerging regional specialisations...

Even though metropolitan areas account for half of the population, and an even larger share of economic activity of OECD countries, almost no systematic information on governance structures in these areas exists. This study – based on a novel data set – gives an overview of governance...

This paper provides an overview of country specific approaches to metropolitan area governance. It provides brief descriptions of the typical structures of metropolitan governance, with a particular focus on the involved organisations. It points out metropolitan areas that have unusual...

This study aims to assess the degree of institutional fragmentation of transport and land use planning in Chicago and to assess the main challenges related to this institutional fragmentation. It provides an overview of local governments in metropolitan Chicago and mechanisms for metropolitan...

This paper presents recent work undertaken at the OECD to produce environmental indicators at the regional level from geographic data sources. New indicators have been tested and produced in five different domains: a) land cover, b) forest ecosystems, c) urban density, d) CO2 emissions, e) air...