Territorial Review Copenhagen - Region Hovedstaden

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crime corresponds to a 1% decline in city population. They find that almost
all of the crime-related population decline is attributable to increased outmigration
rather than a decrease in new arrivals. Migration decisions of
highly educated households and those with children are particularly
responsive to changes in crime. Causality appears to run from rising crime
rates to city depopulation.
Schwartz et al. (2003) estimate an elasticity of property value with
respect to violent crime rate of 0.15. They find that falling crime rates are
responsible for about one-third of the post-1994 boom in property values.
Their findings indicate that the fall in violent crime since 1998 has raised
property values by about 8%, with most of this effect accruing from 1994
and later. The fall in violent crime accounted for about one-third of the total
real price appreciation during the 1994 to 1998 period. This fall was valued
at more than USD 15 000 per household, considering the sales-weighted
average of the price per housing unit in New York City. Although crime
rates are important, declining crime rates can only explain a modest amount
of the increased demand for living in New York City and other big cities
(Glaeser and Gottlieb, 2006).
Kahn (2001) has tested the relative importance of air quality as an urban
amenity using data from Los Angeles County, an area where dramatic
improvements in smog have been achieved. While high-ozone areas feature
lower rents, the ozone‘s capitalisation suggests that it is not a key urban
disamenity: to purchase a 10-day per year reduction in exposure to high
ozone levels required an extra payment of 3%.
Infrastructure
Public infrastructure can play an important complementary role in the
productivity of the regional private sector. Evidence from the United States
suggests that the heavy infrastructure investment in the country during the
1950s and 1960s was a key factor in the strong economic performance
during that period. While new regional infrastructure may encourage
development in under-developed regions, its construction alone will not be
enough to bring about any desired economic changes. In many situations,
the provision of regional infrastructure can act as a catalyst for the
generation of local agglomeration economies. The nature of infrastructure
tends to mean that there are capacity limits beyond which negative
externalities start to dominate.
The impact that variations in the provision of transport infrastructure
have on regional development has been difficult to verify empirically. There
seems to be a clear positive correlation between transport infrastructure
endowment or inter-regional accessibility and the levels of economic