Research Seminar: Uncovering Commercial Activity in Informal Cities

Speaker: Neave O’Clery, Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London

Abstract: Knowledge of the spatial organization of economic activity within a city is a key to policy concerns. However, in developing cities with high levels of informality, this information is often unavailable. Recent progress in machine learning together with the availability of street imagery offers an affordable and easily automated solution. Here, we propose an algorithm that can detect what we call visible establishments using street view imagery. By using Medellín, Colombia as a case study, we illustrate how this approach can be used to uncover previously unseen economic activity. By applying spatial analysis to our dataset, we detect a polycentric structure with five distinct clusters located in both the established centre and peripheral areas. Comparing the density of visible establishments with that of registered firms, we infer that informal activity concentrates in poor but densely populated areas. Our findings highlight the large gap between what is captured in official data and the reality on the ground.

Please register in advance.  The Zoom webinar is open to the public.

About the Speaker: Neave O’Clery is Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London where she leads an inter-disciplinary research group focused on data-driven models for economic development and urban systems. She is also a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Mathematical Institute and an Oxford Martin Fellow. Her work spans a number of topics and fields including structural change and industrial development, economic complexity and evolutionary economic geography, the informal economy, urban mobility and segregation, and network science. She also works alongside a number of policy and government institutions ranging from city majors to global multi-laterals including the UK and Irish governments and the World Bank. Neave was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and before this a Fulbright Scholar and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is founder and co-chair of the Oxford Summer School in Economic Networks, an annual multi-disciplinary summer school since 2017. She holds a PhD (mathematics) from Imperial College.