Urban areas face daunting economic challenges that have increased in scope in recent years. At the same time, cities provide exciting opportunities for growth and revitalization. The interaction of these challenges and opportunities create important tasks for policymakers and researchers. Fiscal, financial and organisational problems of the urban world provide a wide scope for research in this field. Additionally, this complex reality grows over time. The city is omnipresent; in fact, the “urban boom” has led most inhabitants of this planet to live in builtup urban areas. Nowadays, however, metropolises are not just a simple extrapolation of the cities of the past. Important changes in scale and nature have been produced. The concept of “distance”, that has been ruling the organisation of space for a long time, has been overtaken by new technology, which facilitates urban networks. 

Thus, many problems related with the public sector emerge in this world of congestion and mobility patterns that generate built-up urban areas, in many cases uncontrolled built-up urban areas. Some of these problems are, for example, fiscal stress, effects of political mergers between cities and suburbs, lack of fiscal equity –horizontal and vertical– between different areas, taxation and institutional size, etc. Other problems directly related with urban public economics are also generated such as, pollution, deterioration of local infrastructure, under-supply of housing, low quantity and quality of public services, etc.

Therefore the main aim of the Urban Public Economics Review (UPER) is to provide strong support for research in this complex and fascinating field. At the same time, the UPER will complement this objective with the organisation of periodical scientific meetings. Our highly qualified Editorial Board, that we expect to extend in the future, contributes with its guidance and effort to this new venture, which we hope to be a long and productive one. Our intellectual challenge could have not been materialised without the support of our sponsors, to whom we are extremely grateful.

— Luis Caramés Viéitez                                                — Jean Michel Uhaldeborde

University of Santiago de Compostela                         University of Pau y Pays del Adour