Place
and political geography
Progressive nurture. Early-life exposure to urbanisation shapes long-term individual outlooks. With Z. Wei (Cambridge), N. Lee (LSE), A. McNeil (UCL).
Urban-rural polarisation of values is a key societal cleavage of our time. However, there is still debate about whether the differences observed across places are contextual or purely compositional. We provide novel causal evidence showing that exposure to urban density influences individual outlooks beyond compositional effects, but this influence is primarily driven by the environments where individuals spend their early years. We do this by using household panel data from both the UK and Switzerland, which allows us to combine Two-Stage-Least Squares and ‘Movers’ research designs. We show with two different approaches that exposure to urban density before age 20 causally increases support for immigration and gender equality, highlighting the lasting influence of exposure to urban density early in life. Our results are not driven by ethnic diversity or income effects, suggesting that other mechanisms such as peer-to-peer socialisation and schooling may play a role.
Urban design interventions to reduce fear of crime in public spaces have non-linear and gender-sensitive effects. With P. Navarrete (U. Chile) and T. Schlesser (Cambridge). Nature Cities: Revise and resubmit.
Addressing crime and fear in public spaces is a priority in global urban development agendas. A family of approaches under the umbrella of Environmental Crime Prevention (ECP) suggests that modifying the built environment can reduce crime rates and improve safety perceptions. However, it remains debated whether these interventions are equally effective across genders, and what are the optimal type and intensity of ECP interventions needed to maximise safety perceptions while optimising costs. We evaluated the impact of varying intervention levels on perceived safety in neglected urban areas through a randomised experiment run in Chile using photo simulations and an adapted Positive and Negative Affective Schedule. Participants assessed three popular interventions: blind wall modifications, graffiti removal, and the integration of green infrastructure, each applied at different intensities across four types of public spaces. Based on 18,150 affective perception ratings from 2,028 respondents, our findings show that nature-based solutions targeting subconscious physiological responses to fear are more effective than interventions addressing conscious fear of crime, especially at higher treatment levels. The responses are highly gender-specific. Interventions were more effective for males than females, highlighting that environmental changes alone do not fully alleviate women’s perceived insecurity.
The global geography of climate attitudes, North and South. With F. Block (Camrbidge).
Climate change is both materially and politically uneven, with impacts and perceptions shaped by geography. While subnational spatial divides in climate attitudes are well documented in high-income democracies, much less is known about whether these patterns hold in the Global South, where policy choices will be critical for both national development and global mitigation efforts. We combine a systematic review of the spatial drivers of climate opinion with an analysis of a new dataset covering around 40,000 individuals in 20 countries. We test whether urban–rural divides, distance to core cities and local economic structures influence climate perceptions. Our findings reveal both shared and divergent geographies of climate opinion between the Global North and South, highlighting why policy approaches developed in industrialised democracies cannot be assumed to translate seamlessly elsewhere.
Political economy
of spatial divergence
Ballots, budgets and bricks: Brexit and the polarisation of individual economic behaviours. With Z. Wei (Cambridge) and P. Kuang (University of Macau). Link to WP. Link to older WP. Journal of Public Economics: Revise and resubmit.
Does political polarisation influence economic expectations and actual behaviours? Using British nationally representative surveys and administrative data, we show that the Brexit referendum triggered stark divergences in individual micro and macro expectations between Leave and Remain supporters. These diverging beliefs influenced major financial decisions. Leavers became more likely to purchase durables and engage in housing transactions, and areas with higher proportions of Leave voters experienced increased housing transaction volumes and rising prices. Our findings highlight how issue polarisation, beyond partisanship, can influence both economic expectations and real-world decisions.
The global link between local wealth inequality and political protests. With Z. Wei (Cambridge), N. Lee (LSE), Rodríguez-Pose, A. (LSE).
Economic inequality is a key driver of political protest in advanced economies of Europe and North America, yet the generalisability of this association across the globe remains poorly understood. In this paper, we study how localised wealth inequality is linked to protests across more than 25,000 subnational administrative units in 88 Global South countries, covering around one third of the world’s population. We assemble novel, fine-grained estimates of relative wealth at the 2.4 km x 2.4 km grid cell level to construct measures of local wealth inequality and link them to over 645,000 georeferenced protest events recorded daily from 2014 to 2018. Exploiting variation within subnational meso-regions, we document a robust, positive association between local wealth inequality and protest incidence. This relationship is primarily driven by proximity to the wealthiest, while a strong middle class appears to buffer these effects. The strength of this association is moderated by national context: it is stronger in countries with lower levels of economic development, higher unemployment among individuals with advanced education, weaker regulatory quality and control of corruption, and greater social fractionalisation — but also where the rule of law and protection of expression are stronger. For a subset of countries, we develop a new measure of `experienced inequality’ capturing individuals’ exposure to wealth disparities in their closer surroundings, and show that it is strongly correlated with protests, particularly when local units are compared to their most proximate neighbours. Our findings reveal that localised, experienced wealth inequality is a powerful but context specific predictor of political protest across the Global South.
Policy
evaluation of place-based and other spatially targeted actions
NextGenerationEU lands: Assessing the territorial distribution of Italy’s Recovery and Resilience funds. With F. Scotti (Politecnico di Milano) and C. Caporali (GSSI). Link to WP, link to another WP.
In response to COVID-19, the EU launched NextGenerationEU, its most extensive stimulus package to date. We focus on Italy, Europe’s largest beneficiary, and analyse the territorial allocation of its funds from central to local governments. Using a two-stage Heckman selection model, we find that funds primarily target Southern urban areas with stronger administrative capacity and prior EU Cohesion Policy experience. Allocation strategies vary by policy mission: Inclusion and Cohesion funds follow a convergence rationale, while Digital, Education, and Healthcare investments follow a specialisation logic, targeting areas with pre-existing sectoral strengths. Lastly, administrative efficiency and strong local governance reduce project delays.
Davide Luca 