Where cities come from and why land costs what it does
Urban economics puts space back into economics: it asks why cities exist, why some grow while others shrink, and how land, housing, labour, and travel markets settle into a pattern on the map. Nano College takes the standard university treatment of the subject and rebuilds it as short, self-contained articles you can finish one at a time — the same ground and the same rigour, without the padding that exists only to fill a semester. Work through it and you can read a city's rents, densities, and commuting flows as predictable consequences of decisions rather than as facts of nature.
Coming soon
The vocabulary and the five axioms the rest of the collection keeps reusing.
The vocabulary and the five axioms the rest of the collection keeps reusing.
Agglomeration as the engine, location choice as the steering, central places as the result.
Agglomeration as the engine, location choice as the steering, central places as the result.
City size and growth, the labour market that sustains them, and the earliest cities we know.
City size and growth, the labour market that sustains them, and the earliest cities we know.
Where the bid-rent logic turns into the price of a plot, an office floor, and a house.
Where the bid-rent logic turns into the price of a plot, an office floor, and a house.
How jobs, homes, and neighbours arrange themselves, and what happens when the whole system moves.
How jobs, homes, and neighbours arrange themselves, and what happens when the whole system moves.
The rules a city writes about land, and the housing outcomes those rules produce.
The rules a city writes about land, and the housing outcomes those rules produce.
Urban travel is underpriced at the margin; this group works out what that costs and what to do.
Urban travel is underpriced at the margin; this group works out what that costs and what to do.
Who provides local services, who pays, and how the answers show up in schools and safety.
Who provides local services, who pays, and how the answers show up in schools and safety.
“Urban economics explained as connected decisions rather than as a list of city facts.”
The sequence is the achievement here: agglomeration explains city size, city size explains land rent, land rent explains the map, and the map explains the problems policy is asked to fix. Each article stands alone, yet the argument accumulates. Readers who have stalled on a long textbook will finish this one.
Nano College takes the standard university textbook for a course and turns it into short, self-contained pieces you can actually finish. We keep the ground the textbook covers and the rigour it insists on; what we leave out is the padding that only exists to fill a semester.