Employment sub-centers of a megacity in a developing country: the case of the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Theoretical models concerned with multiple centers have been brought to the debate on sprawling urban employment. However, empirical methods that identify these centers are not a specific focus of the specialized literature. The purpose of this paper is to apply a new empirical methodology in the identification and characterization of urban employment subcenters (Small Business Districts, SBD) using the case of the Municipality of São Paulo. To this end, we adopted a two-step approach, developing: 1) Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis and 2) Spatial Hedonic Price Model. As a result, we found seven regions that can be considered SBDs.