Infrastructure, mobility and urban vibrancy
Projects
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Access to Urban Vibrancy
How transit extensions promote vibrant urban places
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Global Air Network and Cross-border Venture Capital Mobility
Whether the global air network can facilitate cross-border venture capital movements?
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Publications
Our publications related to these projects
Access to Urban Vibrancy Project
How transit extensions promote vibrant urban places
Image prepared by Anton Vill for the City Form LabVibrant neighborhoods offer multiple urban opportunities. We explore how transit accessibility improvements can trigger urban vibrancy. We jointly analyze five cities.
Analyses
Subway expansion, jobs accessibility improvements and home value appreciation in four global cities: Considering both local and network effects
Accessibility to Firms within the New York City Transit System
Understanding Subway Vibrancy in Live-Work-Play: A Case Study from and for Santiago, Chile.
Zoning and Urban Vibrancy, a case study of São Paulo, Brazil
Subway extensions triggering consumer amenities formation in a cross-cities analysis
Team
Siqi Zheng
Samuel Talk Lee Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability, Faculty Director of MIT Center for Real Estate and Sustainable Urbanization Lab
Adriano Borges Costa
Project Lead, Post-doctoral Researcher in the MIT Center for Real Estate and Sustainable Urbanization Lab
Camila Ramos
Research Assistant, Master Student at MIT-DUSP
Tabea Sonnenschein
Research Affiliate, PhD Candidate at Utrecht University and former Visiting Scholar at MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab
Raj A Mehta
Undergraduate Research Assistant (UROP), MIT
Global Air Network and Cross-border Venture Capital Mobility
Whether the global air network can facilitate cross-border venture capital movements?
The expansion of global air networks that connect cities in different countries contributes to the convenience of cross-border travel in the age of globalization. Venture capital (VC) firms are specialized financial intermediaries that invest in and provide value-added service to high risk innovative start-ups, thus play an essential role in promoting urban vibrancy and economic evolution.
There is a large increase in both international flights and cross-border VC investments from 1995 to 2017, especially in developing regions. It is clear that a positive relationship exists between international flights and VC in-flows, as the size of red points tends to be larger on the map. (On the map, larger size indicates more international flight connections, and the red color means more VC investment deals.)
For further analysis, we merge the Crunchbase VC investment Database with the Traffic by Flight Stage (TFS) dataset published by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Construct a high-dimensional fixed-effects model (staggered DID) to explore the causal effect of flight connections on international VC investment at the city-pair level.
Implement a regression discontinuity (RD) design at a distance of 6000 miles to alleviate the endogeneity concern.
The dynamics of the count and passenger traffic volume of international flights from 1995 to 2017.
International flights and passengersNotes: (1) The data are obtained from ICAO’s Traffic by Flight Stage dataset. (2) The blue bar shows the annual total count of international flights from 1995 to 2017, and the orange line in the plot presents the dynamics of passenger traffic volume for the same period.
Cross-border VC investments are booming, with annual deals exceeding 14,000 in 2017.
Cross-border VC investmentNotes: (1) The data are obtained from Crunchbase database (). (2) The blue bar presents the annual count of VC investment deals from 1995 to 2017, and the orange line in the figure demonstrates the count of city pairs with VC flow for the same period.
World map of VC investment and international flightsNotes: (1) The data are obtained from Crunchbase database (http://www.crunchbase.cn) and ICAO’s Traffic by Flight Stage dataset. (2) The size of each point indicates the total count of international flights connecting to the city. (3) The color of the point represents the total count of VC investment deals flowing to the city. Specifically, green means smaller VC flow, while red means larger VC flow.
"International airlines have a significant facilitating effect on venture capital mobility."
Key Findings
Based on the difference-in-differences estimate, one additional flight per day leads to an increase in VC investment between the city pair by 0.14 deals on average per year (1.08 times the mean value).
The heterogeneous analysis indicates that, with more air connections, emerging industries and firms in earlier developmental stages receive more investment, and non-syndication investment increases more than syndication investment.
The effect significantly increases with geographical distance: city pairs that are far away from each other experience a larger increase in VC flow after flight connections exist.
Most of this increase in capital flows happen in wealthier cities. Connections between poor cities show little effect on VC flow.
Team
Siqi Zheng
MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab
Liaoliao Duan
Hong Lung Center for Real Estate, Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University
Weizeng Sun
School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics
Publications
Costa, A., Ramos, C. & Zheng, S. (2021). Subway Expansion, Jobs Accessibility and Home Value Appreciation in Four Global Cities: Considering Both Local and Network Effects. MIT Center for Real Estate Research Paper No. 21/01
Costa, A., Sonnenschein, T. and Zheng, S. (2021). Subway Expansion and the Rise in the Spatial Disparity of Consumer Amenities. MIT Center for Real Estate Research Paper No. 21/09.
Costa, A., Zegras, P. C. & Zheng, S. (2021). Roads, Transit, and the Denseness of São Paulo's Urban Development. MIT Center for Real Estate Research Paper No. 21/02
Zheng, S., Duan, L., & Sun, W. (2020). Global air network and cross-border venture capital mobility. Habitat International, 102105.
Zheng, S., & Du, R. (2020). How does urban agglomeration integration promote entrepreneurship in China? Evidence from regional human capital spillovers and market integration. Cities, 97, 102529.