Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance. More specifically, it is a branch of microeconomics that studies the urban spatial structure and the location of households and firms (Quigley 2008).
Historically, much like economics generally, urban economics was influenced by multiple schools of thought, including original institutional economics and Marxist economics. These heterodox economic currents continue to be used in contemporary political-economic analyses of cities. But, most urban economics today is neoclassical in orientation and centred largely around urban experiences in the Global North. This dominant urban economics also influences mainstream media like The Economist. Today, much urban economic analysis relies on a particular model of urban spatial structure, the monocentric city model pioneered in the 1960s by William Alonso, Richard Muth, and Edwin Mills. While most other forms of neoclassical economics do not account for spatial relationships between individuals and organizations, urban economics focuses on these spatial relationships to understand the economic motivations underlying the formation, functioning, and development of cities.
