Designed to reach a wide audience of scholars and policymakers, "The Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs" is an annual series that serves as a forum for cutting-edge, accessible research on urban policy. The editors seek to integrate broader research into the urban policy discussion by bringing urban studies scholars together with economists and researchers studying subjects with important urban implications. In this issue, papers examine a range of issues that are relevant to urban economics: the effects of job location in an urban area on residential choice patterns; the impact of race, ethnicity, and gender on mortgage lending; and, the effects of urban characteristics on the development of new patents. This volume also contains three papers on urban development outside of the United States: urban sprawl in Europe; rural-to-urban migration patterns in Brazil; and, location patterns of industry agglomeration across Japanese cities.