Natural Amenities, Neighbourhood Dynamics, and Persistence in the Spatial Distribution of Income

Lee, Sanghoon; Lin, Jeffrey

doi:10.1093/restud/rdx018

Cited by 135 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…First, we want to account for the possibility that preferences over these amenities have changed over time. Second, controls for natural amenities may anchor a-uent neighborhoods (Lee & Lin, 2018), meaning nearby neighborhoods may be less likely to experience demographic change. Third, controls for distance to top quartile tracts account for the possibility that tracts near CBDs gentri…ed simply because of expansions of nearby high-income neighborhoods (Guerrieri, Hartley, & Hurst, 2013).…”

Section: Explaining Changes In Neighborhood Valuations By Demographicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010

Baum-Snow

Hartley

2020

Journal of Urban Economics

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After 1980-2000 population decline and economic stagnation, downtown neighborhoods in most large US cities experienced 2000-2010 population growth and gentri-…cation. Stark racial di¤erences in valuations of downtown amenities and suburban labor market opportunities among those with less than college that only emerged after 2000 are the primary drivers of these downtown neighborhood dynamics. As collegeeducated whites moved in, increases in valuations of downtown amenities encouraged other whites to remain in downtowns, a reversal from prior decades. Continued departures of less than college educated minorities were driven both by relative improvements in suburban employment opportunities for this group and their continued declines in valuations of downtown amenities. Our evidence highlights the importance of racial di¤erences in valuations of potentially endogenous local amenities for understanding recent downtown gentri…cation.

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Section: Explaining Changes In Neighborhood Valuations By Demographicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010

Baum-Snow

Hartley

2020

Journal of Urban Economics

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“…Housing Prices To overcome the endogeneity of house price changes, we exploit the correlation between housing prices and exogenous natural amenities identified by Lee and Lin (2018). We expect geographic features like oceans and mountains to act like anchors imposing supply constraints on land, thereby driving up relative house price levels, as described in Gyourko et al (2013).…”

Section: Consumption Amenity Densitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Police districts are mostly cities and, while CBSAs consist of many cities, the central city in most CBSAs is larger than the downtown experiencing urban revival. In some cases like Houston and Atlanta, police districts are at the county level, so the parts of the respective central city in different counties report different 5 Data on natural amenities, like the precipitation, hilliness, and coastal proximity of each census tract, are from Lee and Lin (2018).To investigate recent trends in family formation, income growth, expenditures, and travel that can explain the changing preferences of young college graduates, we use counts of individuals by family type and income bracket within each age-education group.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Urban Revival in America, 2000 to 2010

Couture

Handbury

2017

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This paper documents and explains the striking rise in the proclivity of college-educated individuals to reside near city centers since 2000. We show that this recent urban revival is driven almost entirely by younger college graduates in larger cities. With a residential choice model, we quantify the role of jobs, amenities, and house prices in explaining this trend. We find that the rising taste of young college graduates for non-tradable service amenities like restaurants and nightlife accounts for more than 40 percent of their movement toward city centers. Complementary data shows a corresponding rise in young college graduate expenditures on and trips to non-tradable services. We then link changes in both consumption and urbanization to secular trends of top income growth and delayed family formation amongst young college graduates.To measure consumption amenity density, we pair a geo-coded census of establishments in 2000 and 2010 from the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) with a dataset containing travel times between these establishments and census tract centroids by foot from Google Maps. 8 We calculate indexes measuring four types of consumption amenities: two non-tradable services (restaurants and nightlife) and two types of tradable retail (food and apparel). We also measure consumption amenity diversity as an inverse-Herfindahl index using the most refined industry classification available in the NETS (at the SIC8 level, e.g., Korean restaurants). Finally, we use the smartphone visit data, described further in Couture et al. (2019), to calculate an amenity quality index that captures the presence of restaurant chains preferred by a given age and education group.Our primary measure of housing costs for 2000 and 2010 is the Zillow House Value Index for two-bedroom homes, which measures median house prices at the zip code level. In robustness checks, we use alternative house price indices, rental prices using HUD's Fair Market Rent Series for one-, two-, and three-bedroom homes (available at the county level), and the median age of the housing stock from the 2000 census and the 2008-2012 ACS, to measure one aspect of housing quality and new housing developments. 9 We complement these three main tract-characteristic datasets with information on public amenities (transit times, violent crime per capita, school district rankings) and natural amenities. Our measure of transit performance at the tract-level comes from Google Maps in 2014, and is the average travel time of a five-mile trip from a tract centroid to a random set of NETS establishments. We measure violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) at the police district-level using the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) data for 2000 and 2010. We measure school quality using within-state rankings of school districts in 2004 and 2010 from SchoolDigger.com. 10 There are typically multiple tracts within a particular police and school district. We match these areas to 2010 tract boundaries using Census shapefiles. 11 8 The p...

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“…The literature on amenities has addressed both different types of cities as Brueckner, Thisse, and Zenou (1999), as well as specifically examined historic amenities (VanOmmeren, Rietveld, & Koster, 2014), natural amenities (Lee & Lin, 2017), good weather (Fleming, Grimes, Lebreton, Maré, & Nunns, 2018), social interaction (Hawley & Turnbull, 2018), and green space (Tyrväinen & Väänänen, 1998).…”

Section: Prior Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Location choice, life cycle and amenities

Letdin

Shim

2019

Journal of Regional Science

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Our study proposes a housing location choice model where a household faces a trade‐off between proximity to place of employment and proximity to amenities. We consider subsamples of high amenity cities and low amenity cities and households with and without children. We show that the roles of gender, education, homeownership, household composition, and public transportation vary significantly depending on level of amenities. Households with a female head of household, those with a working spouse and with older children prefer locating closer to downtown amenities. Female workers with and without children locate closer to work, in high and low amenity cities.

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Natural Amenities, Neighbourhood Dynamics, and Persistence in the Spatial Distribution of Income

Cited by 135 publications

References 42 publications

Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010

Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010

Urban Revival in America, 2000 to 2010

Location choice, life cycle and amenities

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