Residential urban overcrowding in Alexandria, Egypt: A spatial econometrics analysis

Although residential crowding has various impacts on household socioeconomic and health circumstances, there has been a dearth of research investigating and predicting spatial patterns of overcrowding in Arab nations. In this work, analytical modeling techniques are applied to investigate the interrelationships between residential overcrowding and other explanatory variables in Alexandria, Egypt. Global (Ordinarily Least Squared) and local (Autoregressive, Error Term and Geographically Weighted regression) models are employed to conduct the analysis. As a global model, OLS assumes homogeneity among spatial predictors and it fails to account for spatial non-stationary. In contrast, the proposed local spatial econometric models can easily model spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity. Population density and one-room-dwellings were found to be positively and significantly associated with overcrowding, while higher education of residents and five rooms dwelling were negatively related to residential overcrowding across Alexandria districts. Significant implications ranging from governmental subsidy to planning public housing are discussed.