Research
Urban Lab is a multidisciplinary research environment for quantitative studies of issues connected to cities and urbanization processes. The research combines methodological competences from various disciplines with access to the large amount of geocoded microdata found in IBF's GeoSweden database.
The research that is ongoing, and planned, within the Urban Lab contains broad questions: Why do some cities grow while others shrink? Why do some areas within cities have a positive development and others a negative one? How do urbanization and neighborhood affect different outcomes in terms of, for example, economic inequality, individuals' health and children's future? What role does local politics play in local development?
Research projects
How civil war affects individuals' migration decision
This project studies how civil war and especially genocide in Rwanda affects individuals' migration decisions.
Urban versus rural areas and multidimensional skill-mismatch
This project examines empirically how match quality differs for individuals who live in urban and rural areas.
Take-up and consequences of debt relief among over indebted individuals in Sweden
In this project, we investigate the Swedish debt relief program´s effectiveness.
Do initial neighborhood characteristics impact future residential integration of refugees?
This project investigates the long-term impact of refugees' initial neighborhood placement on long-term neighborhood integration.
The demographic atlas "Boendebarometern"
"Boendebarometern" describes the development over time at the neighborhood level (DeSO) across dimensions such as education level and income for tenants, condominium owners, and homeowners.
Scars of War: the local legacy of WW1 deaths on British soldiers
This project study the local legacy of the WW1 mortality shock and its effects on British soldiers’ behavior in WW2.
Effects of early housing market entry
How is an area’s socioeconomic and demographic mix affected by random allocation of housing?
Electricity, societal change and labour market transformation
This project analyses how local labour markets adapt to technological change.
Planning and social mix
This project study if new construction of housing in Swedish cities, 1995–2017, has affected tenure mix in neighbourhoods, and if this in turn affected social mix.
How preschool quality relates to children’s learning outcomes
The project investigates whether, and under what conditions, differences in the quality of preschool are important for children's knowledge development in preschool class.
Growing cities and segregated neighbourhoods
This project investigates how new housing constructions affect residential sorting patterns across neighbourhoods in cities.
Effects of having a neighbourhood being classified as a ”vulnerable area”
This research examines how the police classification affects the pinpointed areas.
Land use in Sweden
In this project, we construct a database with comprehensive information about how the land is used in Sweden.
How do individuals and local stakeholder value housing?
We study the willingness to pay for different housing attributes as well as local rental market stakeholder's views and understanding of tenants’ value and how they perceive the principles, functions and legitimacy of rent setting.
Neighbourhood reputation and youth schooling paths
We explore how the change in degree of stigma following the release of the police list of vulnerable areas affected the sorting of adolescent students about to apply for high school.
Crime composition in gang enclaves
In this project, we analyse whether there is a tipping point in gang presence that affects criminal patterns, and we test for discontinuities in crime levels and composition.
Gang sweeps, crime, and welfare
In this project, we study criminal organisations' causal effect on crime for arrested individuals and known peers. We also study broader welfare implications for the areas where a sweep took place.
Community-based interventions and inequality
In this project, we study the effects on local crime rates of bolstering community ties.
Initial labour market conditions, housing markets, and welfare
In this research, we study how labour market entry conditions affect housing tenure and affordability in the long term, across Europe for the last 30 years.
The dynamics of land development around floodplains
Using a rich dataset on historical flood records and the universe of buildings in Spain, we document the patterns of land development in the aftermath of an inundation.
Public sector employment programmes
This project study the effects of public sector employment programmes- do they benefit groups with weak labour market attachment despite negative lock-in effects?
Do brokers beat auctions in the sale of foreclosed real estate property?
This project studies the impact of compulsory sale at a public auction compared with voluntary brokered sale in sales of foreclosed real estate property.
Age at arrival and residential integration
In this project, we study whether immigrant children who arrive at earlier ages in Sweden live in better neighbourhoods in adulthood.
Housing supply and housing inequality
We investigate whether new housing units trickle down to disadvantaged groups.
Ethnic enclaves and political participation
What is the effect of residing in ethnic enclaves on immigrants' future political participation?
Does income redistribution prevent residential segregation?
This project investigates the effects of income inequality on residential segregation using Swedish population data from 1990–2017.
Effects of COVID on population mobility under Swedish mild policies
This project uses mobile phone data to investigate what effects the Swedish less restrictive recommendations for social distancing during the pandemic had on individual mobility.
Renovations of rental housing and socio-economic sorting
The purpose of this project is to examine if renovations affect the socio-economic composition in the renovated properties.
Urban social and economic geography in the long run
This research project has the aim of analysing changes to urban social and economic geography over the 1880–2017 period for six Swedish cities.
The heavy metal project
This project aims to learn more about the consequences of environmental exposures such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic in childhood on outcomes later in life.
The effect of urban migration on educational attainment
In this project, we focus on the effects of urban migration in developing countries on educational outcomes of children.
Skill formation with parenting styles and peer inputs in neighborhoods
This project is modeling and estimating children's accumulation of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in response to parenting styles and peer inputs and the interaction between them.
