Transportation and urban spatial structure: Evidence from Paris

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of railroad development in employment subcentre formation in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2018. Over half a century, approximately 1.5 million new jobs were created; however, their spatial distribution across the Île-de-France region was uneven. Paris intramuros has lost 123,000 jobs for the 50-year period, while the Grande Couronne (outer periphery) accounted for 2/3 of employment growth. These dramatic changes in the geography of employment in the Paris metropolitan region were coupled with cardinal alterations in railroad transportation, whose network has expanded and whose branches have been intertwined in order to improve population mobility and, to some extent, decentralise the capital area in favour of the development of peripheral territories. The construction of the Réseau Express Régional (RER) on the basis of 19th century railroads together with formation of the Transilien network were stepping stones towards today’s efficient rapid transit system. Our investigation, using McMillen (2001) method to identify subcentres as well as the IV approach to determine the role of railway transport development in local employment growth and the evolution of urban spatial structures, corroborates the decisive role of RER in fostering employment and in the emergence of employment subcentres. Specifically, the proximity to a railway station boosts employment in the commune. For RER stations, this effect is more substantial and heterogeneous across space, being of greater magnitude for municipalities more distant from the CBD. Furthermore, the presence of a railway station in a commune increases its probability of being a (part of) subcentre from 19.3% to 41.3% depending on the period. Moreover, this effect is of greater magnitude for the presence of a RER station in a municipality (53.2%–76.1%). Interestingly, we cannot confirm that the influence of a railway station on subcentre formation spills over the edge of the commune where it is located.