Matchmaking in Nairobi : The Role of Land Use
Well-functioning cities reduce the economic distance between people and economic opportunities. Cities thrive because they enable matchmaking -- among people, among firms, and between people and job opportunities. This paper examines employment acc...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/716381480965677299/Matchmaking-in-Nairobi-the-role-of-land-use http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25803 |
| Summary: | Well-functioning cities reduce the
economic distance between people and economic opportunities.
Cities thrive because they enable matchmaking -- among
people, among firms, and between people and job
opportunities. This paper examines employment accessibility
in Nairobi, Kenya and evaluates whether modification of land
use patterns can contribute to increases in aggregate
accessibility. The assessment is based on simulation of
counterfactual scenarios of the location of jobs and
households throughout the city without new investments in
housing or transport infrastructure. The analysis finds that
modifications to the spatial layout of Nairobi that
encourage land use clustering can increase the share of
overall opportunities that can be accessed within a given
time-frame. When commuters travel by foot or using the
minibus network, the share of accessible economic
opportunities within an hour doubles from 11 to 21 percent
and from 20 to 42 percent respectively. The analysis also
finds that spatial layouts that maximize the number of
households that have access to a minimum share of jobs,
through a more even jobs-housing balance, come at the
expense of average accessibility. This result is interpreted
as a trade-off between inclusive and efficient labor markets. |
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