Urban non-market interactions and time allocation

Elsa Fontainha, ISEG - Technical University of Lisbon

The paper is divided into three parts: (1) presents the importance of non-market interactions for urban economics. Non-market interactions (NMI) are understood as the conscious or unconscious interactions that take place whenever people interact with one another without money being exchanged. Information flows, inter-citizen relations (neighbourhood support, social networks, voluntary activities, transfer of values, participation in local decision-making, physical attacks, group formation) are aspects of non-market interactions influenced by spatial proximity and therefore help to determine urban density. (2) discusses the difficulty of operationalising the concept of non-market interactions and analyses the extent to which the indicators developed by UN-Habitat and the Urban Audit Indicators-Eurostat, touch upon aspects relating to non-market interactions.(3) shows the potentialities of the information gathered through Time Use Surveys to support the construction of urban indicators of non-market interactions using time use data .