IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v91y2009i4p725-743.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gentrification and Neighborhood Housing Cycles: Will America's Future Downtowns Be Rich?

Author

Listed:
  • Jan K. Brueckner

    (University of California, Irvine)

  • Stuart S. Rosenthal

    (Syracuse University)

Abstract

This paper identifies a new factor, the age of the housing stock, that affects where high- and low-income neighborhoods are located in U.S. cities. High-income households, driven by a high demand for housing services, tend to locate in areas of the city where the housing stock is relatively young. Because cities develop and redevelop from the center outward over time, the location of these neighborhoods varies over the city's history. The model predicts a suburban location for the rich in an initial period, when young dwellings are found only in the suburbs, while predicting eventual gentrification once central redevelopment creates a young downtown housing stock. Controlling for other determinants of where the poor live (e.g., proximity to amenities and public transit), empirical work indicates that if the influence of spatial variation in dwelling ages were eliminated, central-city/suburban disparities in neighborhood economic status would be reduced by up to 10 percentage points. Model estimates further predict that between 2000 and 2020, central-city/suburban differences in economic status will narrow in cities of all sizes, and especially in the larger metropolitan areas as American cities become more gentrified. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan K. Brueckner & Stuart S. Rosenthal, 2009. "Gentrification and Neighborhood Housing Cycles: Will America's Future Downtowns Be Rich?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(4), pages 725-743, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:91:y:2009:i:4:p:725-743
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest.91.4.725
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brueckner, Jan K., 1980. "Residential succession and land-use dynamics in a vintage model of urban housing," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 225-240, June.
    2. Wheaton, William C, 1977. "Income and Urban Residence: An Analysis of Consumer Demand for Location," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 620-631, September.
    3. Edward L. Glaeser & Matthew E. Kahn & Jordan Rappaport, 2000. "Why Do The Poor Live In Cities?," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1891, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2005. "Urban Decline and Durable Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 345-375, April.
    5. Kern, Clifford R., 1981. "Upper-income renaissance in the city: Its sources and implications for the city's future," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 106-124, January.
    6. Brueckner, Jan K. & Thisse, Jacques-Francois & Zenou, Yves, 1999. "Why is central Paris rich and downtown Detroit poor?: An amenity-based theory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 91-107, January.
    7. LeRoy, Stephen F. & Sonstelie, Jon, 1983. "Paradise lost and regained: Transportation innovation, income, and residential location," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 67-89, January.
    8. Braid, Ralph M., 1986. "The comparative statics of a filtering model of housing with two income groups," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 437-448, August.
    9. Coulson, N Edward & Bond, Eric W, 1990. "A Hedonic Approach to Residential Succession," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(3), pages 433-444, August.
    10. Brueckner, Jan K., 1981. "A dynamic model of housing production," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, July.
    11. Braid, Ralph M., 2001. "Spatial Growth and Redevelopment with Perfect Foresight and Durable Housing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 425-452, May.
    12. Aaronson, Daniel, 2001. "Neighborhood Dynamics," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 1-31, January.
    13. Rosenthal Stuart S. & Helsley Robert W., 1994. "Redevelopment and the Urban Land Price Gradient," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 182-200, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Ross, Stephen L., 2015. "Change and Persistence in the Economic Status of Neighborhoods and Cities," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1047-1120, Elsevier.
    2. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2015. "Urban Land Use," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 467-560, Elsevier.
    3. Rosenthal, Stuart S., 2008. "Old homes, externalities, and poor neighborhoods. A model of urban decline and renewal," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 816-840, May.
    4. Glaeser, Edward L. & Kahn, Matthew E., 2004. "Sprawl and urban growth," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 56, pages 2481-2527, Elsevier.
    5. Marques Benton & Lynn E. Browne & Sol Carbonell & Prabal Chakrabarti & DeAnna Green & Yolanda Kodrzycki & Ana Patricia Munoz & Anna Steiger & Richard Walker & Bo Zhao, 2011. "Housing policy and poverty in Springfield," Public and Community Affairs Discussion Papers 2011-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    6. Charles A. M. de Bartolome & Stephen L. Ross, 2002. "The Race to the Suburb: The Location of the Poor in a Metropolitan Area," Working papers 2002-02, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised May 2008.
    7. Helms, Andrew C., 2003. "Understanding gentrification: an empirical analysis of the determinants of urban housing renovation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 474-498, November.
    8. Geoffrey Meen, 2016. "Spatial housing economics: A survey," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(10), pages 1987-2003, August.
    9. Somekh, Babak, "undated". "Commuting And Shopping: Determinants Of City Income Structure," Working Papers WP2012/3, University of Haifa, Department of Economics.
    10. Hans R. A. Koster & Jos N. van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld, 2016. "Historic amenities, income and sorting of households," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 203-236.
    11. JunJie Wu, 2010. "Economic Fundamentals And Urban–Suburban Disparities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 570-591, May.
    12. de Bartolome, Charles A. M. & Ross, Stephen L., 2003. "Equilibria with local governments and commuting: income sorting vs income mixing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-20, July.
    13. Wu, JunJie & Gopinath, Munisamy, 2005. "How Do Location Decisions of Firms and Households Affect Economic Development in Rural America?," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19229, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    14. Brueckner, Jan K. & Selod, Harris, 2006. "The political economy of urban transport-system choice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 983-1005, August.
    15. Lin, Jeffrey, 2002. "Gentrification and Transit in Northwest Chicago," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 41(4).
    16. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Heblich, Stephan & Seidel, Tobias, 2023. "Micro-geographic property price and rent indices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    17. William Sander & William A. Testa, 2009. "Education and Household Location in Chicago," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 116-139, March.
    18. Glaeser, Edward L. & Kahn, Matthew E. & Rappaport, Jordan, 2008. "Why do the poor live in cities The role of public transportation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-24, January.
    19. Ulrich B. Morawetz & H. Allen Klaiber, 2022. "Does housing policy impact income sorting near urban amenities? Evidence from Vienna, Austria," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 69(2), pages 411-454, October.
    20. Wu, JunJie, 2006. "Environmental amenities, urban sprawl, and community characteristics," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 527-547, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:91:y:2009:i:4:p:725-743. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.