Effects of the subway on sectoral and functional specialization in the urban area of Salvador

Abstract

The objective of the article is to evaluate the effect of the subway transportation system in the city of Salvador-BA on the establishment of establishments and the sectorial and functional specialization in the areas that circumscribe the location of line 1 stations. The literature points out that the location of the establishments has a direct relationship with the efficiency of the transport system. The hypothesis raised in the present work is that this line has positively altered the urban economy and the respective spatial balance of the city. Urban economic theory points out that in an environment of imperfect competition, agglomeration externalities can be caused by transportation improvements if they cause co-location of firms. The methods of logistic regression, poisson and differences in differences were used to verify the variation in the sectorial dynamics of establishments in the vicinity of the line 1 subway stations. The database used was derived from the georeferenced microdata from the Annual list of social information (RAIS). The results show that there was an increase in the number of establishments as well as specialization of activities. It was also observed the attractiveness in the region of the historic center of Salvador.