Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) is a tool in land use planning for leveraging new market-rate housing to produce affordable housing, typically in exchange for increased density. While growing in popularity, IZ receives criticisms for the possibility that its market-rate housing component would lead to gentrification by altering local housing markets. Using New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program, a relatively ambitious IZ effort, we test if IZ increases home sales prices and rents in areas that are designated as MIH zones. Based on a comparison of MIH zones to surrounding “control” areas, we find evidence of MIH increased both home sales prices and rents, but the most consistent and statistically significant growth occurred in areas immediately surrounding MIH zones. We find little evidence of price escalation in MIH zones. Our findings suggest that for IZs that are geographically limited like MIH, the costs to residents such as gentrification and increased housing prices may be externalized onto nearby neighborhoods. This points to a policy need for more spatially integrated planning approaches to affordable housing, where affordability protections extend beyond narrowly drawn IZ boundaries.

This review paper analyzes the evolution of data sources, methods, and challenges in measuring residential mobility in the United States since the turn of the 20th century, focusing on attempts to measure these aspects of residential mobility: (i) its magnitude; (ii) its "why"; and (iii) its spatial and temporal context. The expansion of data and methods has been instrumental in the development of theoretical frameworks and the ability to interrogate key empirical questions over the decades. While imperfect, the recent growth in alternative sources of individual- and household-level mobility data promises to extend the frontiers of residential mobility research.

The fate of residents living in gentrifying neighborhoods remains an important yet little understood outcome of the gentrification process. In this study, we assess the effects of gentrification on mobility patterns using the geocoded version of the panel study of income dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative longitudinal survey of households. While many studies examine whether residents move from gentrifying neighborhoods, few study their destinations. We utilize PSID data from 2001 to 2017 to identify each respondent's census tract and characteristics of the tract to which they moved. We find little difference in the socioeconomic status or access to the urban core of the destination neighborhoods of residents originating in gentrifying neighborhoods compared to the destination neighborhoods of residents originating in nongentrifying neighborhoods. Our findings inform debates on whether residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are pushed out of central cities and into worse neighborhoods than residents of other low-income neighborhoods.

This study uses the Open Streets Program in New York City as a natural experiment to test the effects of change in street use on foot traffic changes during COVID-19. In a two-stage-least-squares (2SLS) design, the Open Streets Program is used as an instrumental variable to isolate the exogenous effect of expanded streets for pedestrians on foot traffic patterns. We then estimate a difference-in-differences model that compares the change in foot traffic to public points-of-interests (POI) in neighborhoods that are part of the Open Streets Program with those that are not “before and after” the start of the city-wide program, in addition to other controls such as street types and weather characteristics to help reduce the error variance of the regression. We find that the Open Streets Program helped increase pedestrian activity at a neighborhood level, even when controlling for street types and other confounding temporal factors such as precipitation and temperature.

By quantifying Twitter activity and sentiment for each of 274 neighborhood areas in New York City, this study introduces the Neighborhood Popularity Index and correlates changes in the index with real estate prices, a common measure of neighborhood change. Results show that social media provide both a near-real-time indicator of shifting attitudes toward neighborhoods and an early warning measure of future changes in neighborhood composition and demand. Although social media data provide an important complement to traditional data sources, the use of social media for neighborhood studies raises concerns regarding data accessibility and equity issues in data representativeness and bias.

Journal Article Brandi Thompson Summers. Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City. Get access Brandi Thompson Summers. Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 256. Lance Freeman Lance Freeman University of Pennslvania Email: lf182@columbia.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 1, March 2024, Pages 302–304, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac319 Published: 13 March 2024

This article considers the use of racial equity analysis, or racial equity planning, as a tool to remedy the inequality that has been structured into the built environment through past and ongoing discriminatory and racially insensitive land use regulations and planning. It describes the history of land use planning in the United States, the resulting legacy of exclusionary practices, and the need to explicitly address racial inequities in American cities by considering the impacts of large-scale planning projects. As an illustration, the author describes a racial disparity report that studied the likely effects of a proposed development in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. The article also discusses the promise, limitations, and possible unintended consequences of racial equity planning, including NIMBYism and the use of studies to thwart development generally.

Abstract The second decade of the twentieth century is viewed as the pivotal period for ghetto formation in the United States. This decade witnessed the onset of the Great Migration and it was during this time that modern ghettos, massive agglomerations of tens of thousands of Blacks and virtually only Blacks, became visible. Despite the importance of this period for ghetto formation and the subsequent segregation experienced by Blacks, our understanding of the dynamics of segregation during this period is incomplete. We utilize recently released fine-grained census data to present a more precise and complete picture of segregation in American cities in the second decade of the twentieth century and in doing so make several contributions to the historical literature on residential segregation. First, we document how segregation varied across the full range of American cities, including Southern and smaller cities overlooked in most historical accounts. Second, we assess how the influx of Southern Black migrants into Northern cities was related to increasing segregation. Third, we ascertain the role of Blacks’ socioeconomic status in determining proximity to Whites. Fourth, we examine racial zoning’s impact on segregation. Finally, we consider how the presence of immigrants in a city was related to the residential segregation experienced by Blacks. This research thus adds to the literature on residential segregation by providing more reliable estimates of the degree of residential segregation experienced by Blacks at the beginning of the Great Migration as well as exploring other factors associated with varying levels of segregation at that time.

Abstract From the Great Depression until the 1970s, project-based housing assistance, in the form of the Public Housing Program, was planned and developed in a way that reinforced existing patterns of residential segregation by race. As the victims of public policy that promoted segregation, African Americans decried the way that public housing was used to expand and maintain the ghetto. The dire and persistent need for decent affordable housing and the concomitant resources that develop and maintain such housing, however, have complicated the African American response to segregated affordable housing. This complex and multifaceted stance toward segregated affordable housing has had implications for affordable housing policy from the Public Housing Program through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. This chapter chronicles the African American response and considers the implications of this response for past, present, and future public policy.