Spatial Heterogeneity and Path Dependence in Community-based Economic Development: Reflecting on Urbanization in the Global South

• In Event: Community-based and Practitioner Approaches to the Environment

Abstract

This paper investigates the spatial divergence in urbanization outcomes of as a result of a community-based economic development policy integrated with a local climate adaptation program operating at the regional scale of districts. The paper draws from existing theories on urbanization processes in the global south, and the economic geography of place-based development policies. Existing theories argue that in some parts of the world urbanization mechanisms differ from the others by deviating from canonical understanding of contiguous development of urban sprawl stemming from a well-defined urban core (Bathelt, Buchholz and Storper, 2016; Feldman and Storper, 2016; Randolph and Currid-Halkett, 2022). While this leads to regional economic disparities (Feldman and Storper, 2016; Storper et al, 2016; Storper, 2018; Kemeny and Storper, 2014; Lung-Amam, 2016; Pastor, Matsuoka and Benner, 2015), recent scholarship shows that in the global south, localized political economic processes also lead to in-situ urbanization (Randolph and Storper, 2023; Randolph, 2024). In this paper, I examine whether local economies emerging from place-based adaptation policies yield such instances of urbanization-in-place. I study the local economic transitions underway as a result of local actors connecting to global supply chains. I specifically assess how the emergence of platform-based grocers and agribusiness influences the economic decision-making of local economies and organizations such as the community-based Water User Associations (WUA) and Farmers’ Producers Cooperatives (FPC) under the West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation (WBADMI) project in India.

This paper allows for a critical theoretical framing to emerge that explains the ways in which micro level organizations and policy interventions impact macro processes such as urbanization, regional development, and structural inequalities existing at regional scales. The paper combines four different data sources, (a) bi-annual groundwater maps, (b) census data, (c) government policy evaluations (annual survey), (d) purchase data of groundwater pumps from a leading commercial vendor to examine how place-based policy interventions influence migration patterns at the locations of implementation of WBADMI project. The groundwater maps and Indian Census data are publicly available. The government policy evaluations were obtained with permission from the state and district level government offices. A spatial regression model is used to run the analysis to capture the Heterogenous Treatment Effect (THE) of WBADMI policy on local urbanization and entrepreneurial cluster development at a regional scale. The study hypothesizes that inter-district migration patterns are positively correlated with locations of WBADMI interventions with Grade A evaluations (yearly evaluation conducted by policy implementing agency) post the installation of irrigation schemes. On the contrary, out-migration persists at locations where the intervention yielded less than Grade A evaluation in the last evaluation cycle. I then show that these evaluation outcomes are negatively correlated with the distance between scheme locations and the nearest urban center, linking suburban locationality with the microeconomies generated by local adaptation schemes.

Author

• Sridipta Ghatak, University of California Irvine
  Presenting Author