325 publications from this institution
This report charts the evolution of American urban policy since the 1960s to help readers understand attempts to make our cities more livable and what these attempts reveal about the policymaking process and policy research and how that research has influenced American urban policy. Nine core topics in the urban social agenda are analyzed. They are economic development, poverty, family support and social welfare, housing, land use and transportation, education, drug abuse, racial discrimination and segregation, and intergovernmental financial arrangements. A chapter describing the evolution of the Urban Institute and a chapter on managing urbanization in the developing world are also included.
There is long-standing interest in predicting if and when less advantaged urban neighborhoods will experience upsurges in their housing prices, yet little research has investigated year-to-year neighborhood price dynamics. The authors advance knowledge in this realm by employing anually updated, readily available indicators created from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and assessor’s data from Washington, D.C., census tracts for 1995 to 2005 to estimate a hazard model of the year when consistent, substantial, and sustained housing price appreciation starts in disadvantaged neighborhoods, based on predictors measured one and two years in advance. The results suggest that proximity to stronger neighborhoods, a robust metropolitan housing market, and inflows of higher-status home buyers are key predictors of appreciation onset in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but replications and refinements are needed before firm generalizations about this process can be made.
Flood risks are forecast to rise significantly across many parts of Europe, USA, and Asia. As the climate warms, sea levels will continue to rise and the water holding capacity of the atmosphere will increase exponentially. At the same time, the cost of building flood barriers will increase disproportionately with every additional centimetre of height. For many countries, these flood risks will be highly localised, however, and with strong spatial spillovers. This paper uses a unique dataset for 5 boroughs in London to develop a spatial econometric simulation model of the impacts of current and future flood risks on house prices and the location of employment. We consider the broader socio-economic implications of our results.
This paper estimates the life-cycle costs of housing for persons with mental illness using 5-year and 30-year holding periods and discount rates of 3.5, 5.75, and 8.0%. Life-cycle costs are between 5 and 7% higher in buildings occupied only by mentally ill tenants compared to buildings with no mentally ill tenants. However, the economies of scale in maintenance and repair that exist in buildings occupied by the non-mentally ill are not observed in buildings with mentally ill tenants. Additionally, buildings located in lower-quality neighborhoods have lower life-cycle costs when the tenants are mentally ill, just the reverse of the case for the general population.
My career-long intellectual project has been to understand how our human-built environments—at the dwelling, neighborhood, and metropolitan scales—serve as crucibles for human development, achievem...
Using longitudinal register data from Oslo, Norway, this article examines how cumulative childhood exposure to family and neighbourhood contexts influences the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how these determinants vary by gender and immigrant status. Specifically, we examine how neighbourhood socioeconomic and immigrant context experienced during childhood affects the completion of secondary school and university enrolment during young adulthood. We assess the extent of effect heterogeneity for three immigrant status groups stratified by gender. We control for geographical selection using a recently developed technique that first models parental selection of neighbourhood attributes and then uses the resulting predicted probabilities of selection as instruments in the neighbourhood-effects-on-education model. We find that neighbourhood affluence, educational levels and non-Western immigrant composition have important impacts on young adult educational outcomes, though results differ sharply by gender and immigrant status.
Preface Prologue. Two Daughters of Detroit 1. Riding on the Freeway: A Riff on the Place Called Motown 2. Sculpting Detroit: Polity and Economy Trump Geology 3. From Fort to Ford to ... ? 4. From Old World to Old South and Old Testament 5. Who Will Feast on the Fruits of Labor? 6. Turf Wars 7. Wrestling for Pieces of the Proletarian Pie 8. Feasting on Fear 9. The Dynamics of Decay, Abandonment, and Bankruptcy 10. What Drives Detroiters? 11. From Motown to Mortropolis Epilogue. Two Daughters of Detroit Revisited Selected References Index Ac knowledgments
This chapter demonstrates both in theory and practice that multiple domains related to neighborhoods are characterized by nonlinear or threshold effects that hold powerful implications for both the social rationale for and strategic formulation of neighborhood revitalization and resident diversification policies. This chapter synthesizes research demonstrating that how neighborhoods shape individual behaviors related to residential mobility, investments in property, educational attainment, fertility, employment and a variety of other domains often manifest threshold-like relationships. It considers the nonlinear effects associated with changes in neighborhood racial composition, poverty, and assisted housing, and how these are associated with changes in crime and property values. It advances the proposition of linked threshold effects. Individual mobility and housing investment decisions are triggered discontinuously once perceptions and expectations regarding the neighborhood have exceeded critical values. Aggregations of individual actions typically lead to large changes in neighborhood conditions only after these causal forces exceed a critical point. Once begun, aggregate changes in neighborhood conditions progress over time in a nonlinear fashion once they exceed another critical point.
European research attempting to quantify neighbourhood effects has relied almost exclusively on analyses of observational data. No consensus has emerged, perhaps because a variety of statistical procedures have been employed. We investigate this by exploring the degree to which alternative, non-experimental statistical methods yield different estimates of the relationship between neighbourhood income mix and individual work income when applied to the same longitudinal database. We find that results are highly sensitive to the statistical approach employed. Methods controlling for geographic selection bias generally reduce the negative association between low-income neighbours and individual earnings, but substantial differences across models remain. Controlling for both selection and endogeneity produces larger associations and evidence of non-linearity, something that is hidden in models only controlling for selection. All methods suffer shortcomings, so we argue for multi-method investigations to identify robust findings, with instrumental variables and fixed effects on non-mover samples being preferred. In our case, we find a substantial neighbourhood effect, regardless of the method employed.
This rejoinder addresses the response to articles by Berkovec, Canner, Gabriel, and Hannan. While our earlier comments emphasized the biases in the default approach, we focus here on the basic disagreement: whether, given those biases, the default approach provides a viable test for mortgage lending discrimination. We argue that the default approach does not provide such a test. The Berkovec, Canner, Gabriel, and Hannan research (BCGH, 1994 and in this issue) provides a careful empirical look at racial differences in loan default rates using data on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages. In this rejoinder, however, we focus on the key issues that separate us. First, we express our deep concerns about the basic conclusion of the BCGH article; then, with those concerns in mind, we suggest a change in future default specifications. In addition, we discuss the problems inherent in their suggestion that default rates may be useful for partitioning the observed incidence of racial discrimination into two different types: statistical and prejudiced based. Our fundamental disagreement with BCGH centers around the following statement, which is found in their article (in other words) and appears in their response to our critiques: “… FHA loan performance data do not support a finding of widespread systematic discrimination in mortgage lending due to lender prejudice.” Although they acknowledge that their approach may suffer from a variety of biases and cannot prove that discrimination does not exist, they argue that proof is too high a standard for any empirical test. In response, we propose an alternative standard: Performance analyses should not be used to identify discrimination in mortgage lending unless it is demonstrated that these analyses are at least as effective as relevant alternative analyses, such as traditional analyses based on loan approval data. We conclude that the default approach fails to meet this standard under virtually all circumstances. Consider the two key assumptions referred to by BCGH as no omitted variable bias and no statistical discrimination. The first assumption implies that all unobserved variables known to the lender are uncorrelated with race. If that is not so, the BCGH results are biased away from finding discrimination. In this case, BCGH point out—and we agree— loan application studies are also biased, and the bias is in favor of finding discrimination.
“The Social Costs of Concentrated Poverty: Externalities to Neighboring Households and Property Owners and the Dynamics of Decline” We investigate theoretically and empirically two interrelated potential consequences of the spatial concentration of poverty: negative externalities to proximate residents (stimulation of socially harmful behaviors like crime) and property owners (reduced maintenance and, in the extreme, abandonment). Inasmuch as these consequences are capitalized into property values, we use changes in these values to make a rough estimate of the aggregate dollar costs to American society of the aforementioned externalities. We demonstrate the conceptual importance of threshold effects in the analysis of the potential costs of concentrated poverty to the society as a whole. We develop three theoretical models of the consequences of concentrated poverty: (1) micro-level, explaining how/why such would affect household behavior; (2) micro-level, explaining how/why such would affect property owner behavior; (3) meso-level, explaining how concentrated poverty, household behaviors and owner behaviors interrelate when aggregated to the neighborhood level in a mutually causal way. We specify and estimate two empirical models that show in reduced form the changes in property values and rents that transpire from changes in neighborhood poverty rates, both directly and indirectly through impacts on housing upkeep and crime. The first is a hedonic model of individual home sales in Cleveland from 1993-1997, and uses lagged annual observations of public assistance rates in the surrounding census tracts as a way of confronting the issue of simultaneity between values and poverty. The second models median values and rents in all census tracts in the largest 100 metropolitan areas from 1990-2000, and instruments for neighborhood poverty rates. Results from both models are remarkably similar, and show that there is no substantial relationship between neighborhood poverty changes and property values or rents when poverty rates stay below ten (10) percent. By contrast, marginal increases in poverty when neighborhood poverty rates are in the range of 10 to 20 percent results in dramatic declines in value and rent, strongly suggesting a threshold corresponding to the theoretical prediction. Using parameters from the second model, we simulate how property values and rents would have changed in the aggregate for our 100 largest metropolitan areas had populations been redistributed such that: (1) all census tracts in 1990 exceeding 20 percent poverty had their rate reduced to 20 percent by 2000, and (2) only the lowestpoverty tracts were allocated additional poor populations, with each increasing their poverty rate by five percentage points. We find in this thought experiment that owneroccupied property values would have risen $421 billion (13%) and monthly rents would have risen $400 million (4%) in aggregate, ceteris paribus.
Where people grow up can be very important to their educational and other life outcomes. Using evidence from a public housing program in Denver, Colorado, George Galster finds that low-income Latino and African American children who lived for sustained periods in better off neighborhoods were less likely to drop out of secondary school or to repeat a grade. With this in mind, he argues that in order to increase the educational outcomes of low-income minority groups, public housing program planners should locate more subsidized dwellings in neighborhoods with greater advantage.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Using a simultaneous equations model, this study examines cross-metropolitan variations in Puerto Rican residence and economic status. The study addresses the question: Are patterns of Puerto Rican residence a cause and/or consequence of Puerto Rican economic status? Our analytical approach is distinguished by its modeling of bi-directional causal relationships between residential location and income that are mediated partially by female headship rates and male labor force participation rates. The results from our weighted two-stage least squares regression analyses suggest that I) patterns of Puerto Rican segregation are a consequence of their economic status; and 2) the effect of segregation on median income is mediated by female headship and labor force participation rates. We also find evidence to suggest that the relationships between residential location and economic status for Puerto Ricans differ in important ways from those observed for Blacks and other Latino groups.
Flood risks are forecast to rise significantly across many parts of Europe, USA, and Asia. As the climate warms, sea levels will continue to rise and the water holding capacity of the atmosphere will increase exponentially. At the same time, the cost of building flood barriers will increase disproportionately with every additional centimetre of height. For many countries, these flood risks will be highly localised, however, and with strong spatial spillovers. This paper uses a unique dataset for 5 boroughs in London to develop a spatial econometric simulation model of the impacts of current and future flood risks on house prices and the location of employment. We consider the broader socio-economic implications of our results.
This study tests the hypothesis that the acquisition of existing property by the public housing authority and its subsequent rehabilitation and occupancy by subsidized tenants significantly reduced the property values of surrounding single-family homes in Denver during the 1990s. This assessment examined pre- and post-occupancy sales, while controlling for the idiosyncratic neighborhood, local public service, and zoning characteristics of the areas in order to identify which sorts of neighborhoods, if any, experienced declining property values as a result of proximity to dispersed housing tenants. The analyses revealed that proximity to a subsidized housing site generally had an independent, positive effect on single-family home sales prices. The most notable exception to this pattern occurred in neighborhoods more than 20 percent of whose residents were black. Proximity to dispersed public housing sites in these neighborhoods resulted in slower growth in home sales prices in an other-wise booming housing market and suggest a threshold within "vulnerable" neighborhoods whereby any potential gains associated with rehabilitating existing units are offset by the increased concentration of poor residents. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
How will housing markets respond to increased frequency and severity of flooding expected with global climate change? Existing models yield poor predictions because they assume perfect information and rational decision-making processes in the housing market. This paper sets out a plausible alternative framework for analysing housing price responses to flood frequency and severity based on findings of behavioural economics and the sociology of risk, which emphasise myopic and amnesiac perceptions of risk. It utilises this framework to analyse graphically a variety of flood scenarios and their implications for housing prices and government intervention.
Mixite, diversity: pertinent notions ? : presentation de la pleniere [VO] / George Galster. In Mixite : an urban and housing issue? Mixing people, housing and activities as urban challenge of the future, 23eme colloque international de l'European Network for Housing Research (ENHR), organise par le Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Solidarites, Societes, Territoires (LISST) a l'Universite Toulouse II-Le Mirail, 5-8 juillet 2011. The first plenary session will go on to question the foundations of the concept of diversity. What are the possible definitions ? How can we come to terms with the fact that currently, diversity so forcibly structures public discourse and action in the field of housing and habitat ? What does diversity encompass ? How can we measure it? What is its goal ? Leaving aside the fact that one can question the very substance of the notion of diversity, we must shed light on its ideological underpinnings in order to better understand the controversy it elicits in academic circles. The relevance of diversity in terms of the problems it is meant to address seems indeed to be scrutinized in regards to the values and political models of the societies that choose to use this concept.
Federal programs have consistently encouraged ever-lower-income households to buy homes, despite concerns about the long-term sustainability and desirability of homeownership from the perspective of wealth-building, especially since the recent housing market collapse and the epidemic of mortgage foreclosures. We ask in this paper: can very low-income households build wealth through sustainable homeownership, with the aid of an innovative public program? We answer this question by examining 122 very low-income households who purchased their homes between 1996 and 2007 after completing an extensive asset-building and homeownership education/counseling program offered by the Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver (DHA), called HOP. We analyze our own longitudinal surveys and focus groups, as well as data compiled from administrative agency sources, real estate records, and longitudinal census data from the Neighborhood Change Database and the Piton Foundation's Neighborhood Facts Database. We find that homeownership attained through HOP typically did provide very low-income households with opportunities to build home equity (both absolutely and relative to generic homeowner cohorts in Denver) and net wealth, although this was contingent on time of purchase and ethnicity. Our multivariate analyses revealed that changes in annualized home equity appreciation were associated with the ethnic composition of the neighborhood and age of property. Annualized wealth accumulation was associated with annualized home equity appreciation, being married throughout the tenure of homeownership, and year of home purchase. HOP homebuyers received exceptionally favorable initial mortgage terms and conditions, often enhanced with down-payment assistance from their own DHA escrow account or from local housing and neighborhood development organizations, resulting in a dramatically low rate of default and foreclosure to date. Moreover, HOP homebuyers were not immune to financial stresses, and the continuing lack of wealth for many makes them vulnerable to future interruptions in primary wage earner's employment or health. We discuss the implications for low-income homeownership policy and argue that the goal of expanding homeownership opportunities should not be abandoned.
