Urban sprawl and the cost of providing local public services: Empirical evidence for Brazilian municipalities

Urban sprawl is a pattern of growth observed in some big and medium cities which could increase the cost of providing public services by municipalities and thus affect welfare and quality of life for urban residents. This paper analyses the effects of urban sprawl on the cost of providing public services for the medium-density and high-density Brazilian urban centres. We investigate the role of different measures of urban sprawl into equations of public good provision using spatial econometric techniques. Our empirical evidence shows that the main public services affected by urban sprawl are education, health, and social assistance, urban infrastructure and culture, and sports. Also, the results are sensitive to the urban sprawl measure used and the relation between urban sprawl and the cost of providing local public services has a threshold effect associated with the size of the urban centre.