Constructing compact cities: How urban regeneration can enhance growth

This dataset includes many indexes of global cities. The variables of congestion level, skyscraper index, whether a city was bombed in WWII (World War II), and global cities’ population are key variables. (1) The congestion level data were collected from TOMTOM company. The congestion level data includes five indexes in 2004 which are “Congestion level”, “Morning peak Congestion level”, “Evening peak Congestion level”, “Highways Congestion level”, “Non-highways Congestion level”, and two indexes in 2020 which are “Time lost per year” and “Congestion level”. (2) The data of skyscraper index is calculated using the data of building height from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, from which we can obtain accurate data on the number of buildings taller than 150 m. With these data, we constructed an index of skyscrapers taller than 150 m in a city. A building receives a score of 1.5 if it is taller than 150 m and shorter than 200 m, 2.0 if it is between 200 m and 300 m, and so on. Then, we summed the scores for skyscrapers in the city as the “skyscraper index” of the city. (3) The data of whether a city was bombed in WWII is dummy variable, if the urban area of a city was bombed in WWII, it is 1, and 0 otherwise. The authors consulted various historical files and determined the value. (4) The data of global cities’ population, as well as the area and density of the city, are on the city-level, and were collected from the website of the cities or countries’ statistics department. These indicators are good measures of the level of congestion, urban spatial structure, instrumental variable (IV) for urban spatial structure, and urban population in global cities, and can be reused in other analysis.