325 publications from this institution
We investigate the spatial patterns of land use in a representative sample of 50 large U.S. metropolitan areas in 1990, computing 14 indices measuring both job and housing locations. These indices are reduced to seven independent empirical factors via principal component methods. Sampled areas may be categorized in one of four distinctive groups, based on a cluster analysis of their land use patterns: (1) deconcentrated, dense areas: intensively and continuously developed but without major clusters; (2) leapfrog areas: highly concentrated pockets amid generally low density, discontinuous development; (3) compact, core-dominant areas: development with high proximity to the central nucleus, but only moderate density and continuity; (4) dispersed areas: development extending far from the core without notable concentrations or nuclei. Since none of these types manifest uniformly sprawl-like features on all dimensions of land use, we think it inappropriate to consider sprawl as a syndrome measurable by a unidimensional scale. On the contrary, metropolitan areas manifest spatial patterns evincing four distinctive combinations of sprawl-like dimensions. This implies that anti-sprawl policies must be tailored for the particular patterns extant in the area at hand.
Despite much research on the societal and individual consequences of new digital communication technologies, little attention has been paid to the neighbourhood as a locus of impact. This paper investigates how the growing influence of social media and real estate platforms will likely shape the process of neighbourhood change and the geographic distribution of population and financial resources. The investigation is grounded on a model of neighbourhood dynamics based on flows of households and property investments across metropolitan space, which are guided by imperfect information about housing market opportunities. Decision-makers receive information passively (increasingly through local and non-local social media) and when uncertainty about course of action becomes intolerable they turn to active search (increasingly involving online real estate platforms). Based on this conceptual framing, the article synthesises extant research to draw implications on how the expanding use of these new technologies is affecting neighbourhoods by changing the composition of decision-makers and the information that underpins their decisions. It concludes that digitalisation reduces neighbourhoods residential stability, social capital and diversity, while rendering their dwellings less well-maintained and more expensive.
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeorge GalsterGeorge Galster is the Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University. His latest book is Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
Springboard or Flypaper? Port-of-Entry Neighbourhood and the Economic Success of Refugees in Sweden
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(1991). Discrimination Against Female-Headed Households in Rental Housing: Theory and Exploratory Evidence. Review of Social Economy: Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 76-100.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Identifying the determinants of social mobility for children of non-Western immigrants is of vital concern as immigration pressures grow across the West. Prior studies have minimized the role of place as one such determinant but suffers from several unsupportable assumptions. We interrogate this issue by quantifying the relative contributions made by family and neighborhood characteristics in explaining the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how effects differ by gender and parental immigrant status. Our statistical models provide plausibly causal estimates by controlling for geographic selection bias. We estimate model parameters using several cohorts of children raised in Oslo, Norway, for whom government registers provide exceptionally detailed information about cumulative exposures of children to family and neighborhood contexts. Our decomposition demonstrates that differences in childhood neighborhood have a substantial effect on male (but not female) immigrant-native gaps in the probabilities of completing secondary school and of enrolling in university, though these effects are smaller than those reflecting differences in family background. We discuss implications of our findings for people- and place-based social policies aimed at enhancing immigrant opportunities.
No abstract is provided for this article.
We quantify how young adult employment and educational outcomes for low-income African Americans and Latinos relate to their adolescent neighborhood conditions. Data come from surveys of Denver Housing Authority (DHA) households who lived in public housing scattered throughout Denver County. Because DHA allocations mimic random assignment to neighborhood, this program represents a natural experiment for overcoming geographic selection bias. We use the neighborhood originally offered by DHA to instrument for neighborhood experienced during adolescence. Our control function logistic analyses found that higher percentages of foreign-born neighbors predicted higher odds of no post-secondary education and (less reliably) neither working nor attending school. Neighborhood occupational prestige predicted lower odds of young adults receiving public assistance and (less reliably) neither primarily working nor attending school. Effects differed for African Americans and Latinos. We consider potential causal processes underlying our results and suggest why they differ from those from the Moving To Opportunity demonstration.
Many western European housing policies have tried to increase the residential mix of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Unfortunately, policymakers have given little consideration to how these groups will interact as neighbours. There are numerous theoretically grounded mechanisms by which the social mix of a neighbourhood may influence socio-economic outcomes of its residents. These mechanisms differ on the basis of which group is generating the social externality in the neighbourhood, whether this externality is positive or negative, whether it affects all residents equally, and whether the marginal externality generated by adding one more member of a particular group is constant, proportional, or is characterized by a threshold effect. This paper demonstrates that a social mix housing policy can be justified only under a circumscribed set of the preceding parameters. Indeed, depending on the mechanism assumed, social efficiency implies that neighbourhoods should be either: equally mixed, have the disadvantaged group dispersed as widely as possible, or rigidly segregated; for other mechanisms, mix becomes irrelevant. Thus, for formulating and justifying a mixed housing policy on either efficiency or equity grounds it is crucial to understand exactly what sort of neighbourhood effect(s) is operating in neighbourhoods.
<i>We analyzed impacts on single-family home prices of eleven, small-scale supportive housing facilities announced in Denver during 1989–1995.Using a difference in differences econometric specification, we found that these facilities produced a positive impact on house prices within 1,001 to 2,000 feet. We attributed this effect to countervailing externalities (building rehabilitation vs. resident behaviors) that vary in their spatial extent. Supportive housing facilities were systematically sited in neighborhoods with declining relative prices compared to elsewhere in the census tract. This location bias led a conventional econometric specification to erroneously estimate a negative property value impact from supportive housing.</i> (JEL R11, R31)
:Twelve conceptually distinct dimensions of land use patterns are operationalized for 50 large US metropolitan areas using a battery of indices. Common patterns of variation in these indices across metropolitan areas are discerned using correlation and factor analyses. We find that: (1) seven principal components best summarize the dimensions of housing and employment land uses, (2) metro areas often exhibit both high and low levels of sprawl-like patterns across the seven components, and (3) housing and employment aspects of sprawl-like patterns differ in nature. Thus, land use patterns prove multi-dimensional in both theory and practice. Exploratory analyses indicate: (1) little regional variation in land use patterns, (2) metro areas with larger populations are more dense/continuous with greater housing centrality and concentration of employment in the core, (3) older areas have higher degrees of housing concentration and employment in the core, (4) constrained areas evince greater density/continuity, and (5) inter-metropolitan variations in several dimensions of land use patterns are not well explained by population, age, growth patterns, or topographical constraints on development. Results imply that policymakers must carefully unravel which land use dimension is causing undesirable outcomes, and then devise precise policy instruments to change only this dimension.
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No abstract is provided for this article.
This chapter presents debate about how the research, advocacy, and regulatory communities can work effectively to eradicate unlawful discrimination from our mortgage lending markets. It addresses how best to assess the nature and extent of illegal discrimination in mortgage and related markets. The chapter considers how individual violators can best be pinpointed, presumably as a prelude to enforcement or compliance actions. It looks at how studies of institutional context, deterrence versus education approaches, and future research can aid in developing ways to more effectively eliminate lending discrimination. The chapter suggests that two initiatives—preapplication testing and mortgage scoring—warrant special merit in the pantheon of future directions in both research and enforcement. The key question regarding sample design is the way in which the researcher chooses to allocate a given number of tests over the mortgage lenders in the metropolitan area under investigation.
