FROM CITY ASSETS TO PRODUCTIVE JOBS: AN EVENT-HISTORY FRAMEWORK FOR DIAGNOSING URBAN GROWTH CONSTRAINTS IN HISTORICAL CITIES

Abstract

This article develops a qualitative framework for diagnosing why the economic assets of secondary cities do
not always translate into productive investment, stable employment, and higher household earnings. It reformulates a field
instrument prepared for Kokand, Samarkand, and Khiva as an article-level research design. The central methodological
claim is that urban constraints should not be inferred from rankings of general problems. They should be reconstructed
through concrete, dated decisions in which an investor, worker, household, public agency, or service provider faced a
binding obstacle and altered behaviour as a result.
The framework combines seven respondent-specific interview protocols with a common event-history sequence. Each
interview begins with a real investment, hiring, connection, service, training, tourism, commuting, or household-enterprise
event. It then identifies the relevant actor and rule, reconstructs the order of actions, measures the associated shadow
price, records the workaround, compares the case with a less-exposed or successful case, and tests the response
expected if the constraint were relaxed. The unit of evidence is therefore a causal-process observation rather than an
unstructured opinion.
The comparative design links this evidence to five diagnostic pillars: market access; firm capabilities and business inputs;
labour allocation, skills, and inclusion; land, infrastructure, urban access, and amenities; and institutions, coordination,
and policy incidence. Common questions support comparison across the three cities, while targeted probes address
inherited industrial and craft capabilities in Kokand, tourism, development, and heritage pressures in Samarkand, and
water, sanitation, destination management, and seasonality in Khiva.
The article shows how the interview architecture can distinguish a binding constraint from a visible symptom. Credible
diagnosis requires convergence across actors, measurable costs or delays, behavioural responses, negative cases,
documentary corroboration, and a clear policy locus. The framework is intended for hypothesis testing and prioritisation
before large-scale policy design. It does not report completed fieldwork; instead, it establishes the analytical structure
through which field evidence can be converted into city-specific causal narratives and actionable reform propositions.