THREE / The Origins of Neighborhood Change

This chapter applies the metropolitan housing submarket model developed in the prior chapter to demonstrate its power as a diagnostic framework for comprehending the origins, dynamic processes and consequences of neighborhood decline and revitalization. It considers neighborhood downgrading (a combination of physical erosion of the housing stock and downward income succession of households) and upgrading (the opposite combination) separately, though both are subsumed under the common housing submarket analytical framework. After these theoretical expositions, it demonstrates how the predictions of the model comport well with empirical reality, using as archetypes of decline and revitalization of Detroit and Los Angeles. The chapter closes with a discussion of limitations of the housing submarket model as a bridge to forthcoming chapters wherein the model's simplifying assumptions are progressively relaxed.