Abstract
Transport development has been widely recognized as one of the major drivers in shaping urban forms. While recent literature has documented the urban-land use effect of transport networks between cities, little is known about the effect within cities. Using the Global Human Layer Settlement (GHSL) data provided by European Commission Joint-Project, this paper aims to find any causation between highway expansion and urban sprawl within the Jakarta Metropolitan Area, one of the most urbanized areas in the developing countries. Employing historical transport infrastructures as instruments, the result shows that areas experiencing the most improvement in highways access are converging slower than those with small improvement. This paper adds a piece of enticing evidence for urban economics literature that highway expansion may not always lead to a sprawling development of urban areas, but it can hamper its growth into a more compact urban form. Our results also confirm the existence of transport-led urban expansion in the JMA over the last three decades.
