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Neighborhoods change over time through an underlying systematic mechanism. Natural disasters change the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods by causing physical damage, after which outside resources are brought in to support recovery efforts, thereby impacting the natural processes by which neighborhoods change. This study examines the impact of a natural disaster on neighborhood poverty rate and its differential impacts according to neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics. The results show that natural disasters cause a shift in the pattern of the neighborhood poverty rate trajectory and that disasters’ impacts on neighborhood poverty rates are differential across neighborhoods. In particular, natural disasters impact the poverty rates of low-income neighborhoods most adversely.

This article seeks to understand neighborhood change induced by natural hazards in the context of neighborhood change dynamics. Based on the underlying systematic mechanism of neighborhood change, it suggests conceptual and methodological models in which a natural hazard, as a “transient, exogenous shock,” affects neighborhood change trends over time. The models also consider that natural hazards alter neighborhoods differentially according to their basic characteristics. After a natural hazard, two factors exogenous to neighborhoods, physical damages and rehabilitation process, are important to understand the rebuilding process and the shift in the neighborhood change pattern.

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