Municipal property acquisition patterns in a shrinking city: Evidence for the persistence of an urban growth paradigm in Buffalo, NY

Silverman, Robert Mark; Yin, Liang; Patterson, Kelly L.

doi:10.1080/23311886.2015.1012973

Cited by 27 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In Buffalo, demolitions were scheduled in large part in response to arson, eminent health and safety risks, and acute dilapidation. Consequently, addressing the need for emergency demolitions reduced the City's ability to proactively plan demolitions within the context of a broader neighborhood revitalization strategy [41].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This modeling was used to build on previous studies of vacancy and Buffalo's local housing market [3,9,11,17,36,[39][40][41]. There are three hedonic price models on housing sales prices, three logistic regression models on vacancy and abandonment, and three logistic regression models on demolition.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a "persistent and striking high level of Black-White residential segregation" in Buffalo [30]. Areas with the highest vacant rates are where the highest percentage of black population, highest poverty, and highest unemployment rates are found [17,41]. To alleviate the problems associated with high vacancy rates, Buffalo's Mayor launched the "5 in 5" Demolition Plan in 2006.…”

Section: Study Area: Vacant and Abandoned Properties In The City Of Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We follow the same assumption as Morckel [11] that "the variables influence abandonment one year in advance" even though the temporal effects may be shorter or longer than tested. The variable selection followed literature on housing pricing, and housing vacancy and abandonment [9,11,36,41,47,48], and focused on physical factors that might be changed if a proactive policy approach to deal with abandonment is used. For instance, Silverman et al [41] suggested that higher rates of residential vacancy and abandonment are found in census tracts that have higher poverty rates, less expensive housing, and a higher percentage of commercial land uses.…”

Section: Analysis Of Spatio-temporal Data On Vacant Houses and Demolimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Housing Abandonment and Demolition: Exploring the Use of Micro-Level and Multi-Year Models

Yin

Silverman

2015

IJGI

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Policies focusing on enforcing property code violations and the improvement of vacant properties are argued to be more efficacious than demolition policies to fight urban blight. This study applies parcel level data to a multi-year hybrid modeling structure. A fine-grained analysis is conducted on the dynamic patterns of abandonment and demolition for a unique period of four years before and after the City of Buffalo's stepped-up demolition efforts. Results showed that proximity to vacant and abandoned properties, sustained over the years, had the greatest impact on the possibility of a property being abandoned. The second greatest positive impact on property abandonment was small lot front size. Results also showed that neighborhood vacancy density had the greatest negative impact on surrounding housing sales prices over the years. There was no significant impact of demolition on housing sales prices. These findings suggested that the City should aim to have more incentive programs that are tailored to control the number of vacant properties, rather than focusing primarily on demolition-oriented programs.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Area: Vacant and Abandoned Properties In The City Of Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analysis Of Spatio-temporal Data On Vacant Houses and Demolimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Housing Abandonment and Demolition: Exploring the Use of Micro-Level and Multi-Year Models

Yin

Silverman

2015

IJGI

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“…More specifically, while the city's adopted comprehensive plan included a Vacant Property Asset Management Strategy, the "5 in 5" program conspicuously was not linked to it, calling into question its potential to be successful [27]. Additionally, Yin and Silverman [33] and Silverman et al [15] have discussed the reactionary nature of the program, arguing that its detachment from proactive and comprehensive planning efforts undermined its efficacy.…”

Section: Stock and Flow Diagramming And Feedback Loopsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Shrinking Cities Demolish Vacancy? An Empirical Evaluation of a Demolition-First Approach to Vacancy Management in Buffalo, NY, USA

Weaver

Knight

2018

Urban Science

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Publicly-funded demolition of vacant structures is an essential tool used in shrinking cities to eliminate nuisances and, often, reduce vacancy rates. Concerning the latter, however, when shrinking cities implement large-scale demolition programs independent of complementary planning efforts, it is reasonable to expect impacts on vacancy to be negligible. Among other reasons, demolition operates only on the outflow of existing vacant structures and largely fails to grapple with inflows that add to vacancy over time. This article evaluates an ambitious demolition program in Buffalo, NY, USA, that sought, explicitly, to lower the municipality's overall vacancy rate. Evidence from statistical changepoint models and Granger tests suggest that, while Buffalo's overall vacancy rate, measured as undeliverable postal addresses, appeared to decrease around the time of the program, the drop was not linked to elevated demolition activity. The same finding holds for the subarea in which demolitions were spatiotemporally clustered. Although this lack of efficacy is potentially because the city failed to demolish its targeted number of structures, we argue that the likelier explanation is that demolition was not part of a holistic planning strategy. These results have important implications for using large-scale demolition programs as standalone vacancy management policies in shrinking cities.

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Planning for growth in depopulating cities: An analysis of population projections and population change in depopulating and populating US cities

Park¹,

LaFrombois

2019

Cities

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Municipal property acquisition patterns in a shrinking city: Evidence for the persistence of an urban growth paradigm in Buffalo, NY

Cited by 27 publications

References 36 publications

Housing Abandonment and Demolition: Exploring the Use of Micro-Level and Multi-Year Models

Housing Abandonment and Demolition: Exploring the Use of Micro-Level and Multi-Year Models

Can Shrinking Cities Demolish Vacancy? An Empirical Evaluation of a Demolition-First Approach to Vacancy Management in Buffalo, NY, USA

Planning for growth in depopulating cities: An analysis of population projections and population change in depopulating and populating US cities

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