Research project CORJOLIS

Cities at work: Job Location and Inequalities (CORJOLIS)

The project at a glance

  • Start date:
    01 Apr 2026
  • Duration in months:
    48
  • Funding:
    FNR – Luxembourg
  • Principal Investigator(s):
    Geoffrey CARUSO

About

Spatial inequalities are rising in modern societies, both across cities and within cities. The Great Divergence (Moretti, 2004), describes the movement by which large cities become richer, while smaller cities lag behind. This divergence is related to labor polarization (Autor, 2006), that is, the decrease in the share of middle-skilled jobs. The result of these two movements is an increase in income inequality, both overall and within-cities, the more so in the largest cities. These rising inequalities are likely to contribute to an increase in residential segregation, which could further reinforce within-city inequalities through neighborhood effects. Understanding the impact of labor market transformations on intra-urban spatial inequalities is a major issue for public decision-makers, who face significant challenges in this area, as shown e.g. by the Yellow Vests protest in France. CORJOLIS will use France as a laboratory to provide an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms through which labor market evolutions affect the internal structure of cities and inequalities. It will do so by adressing the three following questions: (i) What is the recent evolution of intra-urban job location by skill, and residential segregation by skill and income, depending on city size? (ii) How can this be explained by recent transformations in job location across cities? (iii) What are the impacts on individual outcomes?

Organisation and Partners

  • Department of Geography and Spatial Planning
  • Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE)
  • ENS Lyon-CERGIC, France (Coordinator)
  • Université Lyon 2 Saint-Etienne – UMR GATE, France
  • Université de Rouen Normandie-UMR IDEES, France

Project team

  • Geoffrey CARUSO, PI
  • Florence Goffette-Nagot, Project member, ENS Lyon CERGIC (external)

Share this