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Beautiful City: Leisure Amenities and Urban Growth

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  • Gerald A. Carlino
  • Albert Salz

Abstract

Modern urban economic theory and policymakers are coming to see the provision of consumer-leisure amenities as a way to attract population, especially the highly skilled and their employers. However, past studies have arguably only provided indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban development. In this paper, we propose and validate the number of tourist trips and the number of crowdsourced picturesque locations as measures of consumer revealed preferences for local lifestyle amenities. Urban population growth in the 1990-2010 period was about 10 percentage points (about one standard deviation) higher in a metro area that was perceived as twice more picturesque. This measure ties with low taxes as the most important predictor of urban population growth. ?Beautiful cities? disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, especially in supply-inelastic markets. In contrast to the generally declining trend of the American central city, neighborhoods that were close to central recreational districts have experienced economic growth, albeit at the cost of minority displacement

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  • Gerald A. Carlino & Albert Salz, 2019. "Beautiful City: Leisure Amenities and Urban Growth," Working Papers 19-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:19-16
    DOI: 10.21799/frbp.wp.2019.16
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    3. Yanting Tang & Jinlong Gao & Wen Chen, 2022. "The Spatial-Temporal Evolution of Population in the Yangtze River Delta, China: An Urban Hierarchy Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-15, October.
    4. Gaigne, Carl & Koster, Hans R.A. & Moizeau, Fabien & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2020. "Income Sorting Across Space: The Role of Amenities and Commuting Costs," Working Papers 302579, Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2).
    5. Min Zhang & Mark D. Partridge & Huasheng Song, 2020. "Amenities and the geography of innovation: evidence from Chinese cities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 65(1), pages 105-145, August.
    6. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2019. "Urban Growth and its Aggregate Implications," NBER Working Papers 26591, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Arntz, Melanie & Brüll, Eduard & Lipowski, Cäcilia, 2021. "Do preferences for urban amenities really differ by skill?," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-045, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    8. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel & Bald, Fabrian & Roth, Duncan & Seidel, Tobias, 2020. "Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model," CEPR Discussion Papers 15594, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. William N Goetzmann & Christophe Spaenjers & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2021. "Real and Private-Value Assets [Gendered prices]," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(8), pages 3497-3526.
    10. Gaigné, Carl & Koster, Hans R.A. & Moizeau, Fabien & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2022. "Who lives where in the city? Amenities, commuting and income sorting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    11. Shi, Tie & Zhu, Wenzhang & Fu, Shihe, 2021. "Quality of life in Chinese cities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    12. Yong Chen & David J. Lewis & Bruce Weber, 2021. "Natural amenities and skill sorting in rural communities: a case study of land conservation policy," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 67(3), pages 649-669, December.
    13. Binzhe Wang & Matias Williams & Fábio Duarte & Siqi Zheng, 2022. "Demand for social interactions: Evidence from the restaurant industry during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 830-857, June.
    14. Heidi Artigue & Jeffrey Brinkman & Svyatoslav Karnasevych, 2022. "The Push of Big City Prices and the Pull of Small Town Amenities," Working Papers 22-41, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    15. David M. Brasington, 2022. "Local economic growth and local government investment in parks and recreation, or five cheese pizzas for $2.6 million," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 81-95, January.
    16. Imran Arif & Adam Hoffer & Brad Humphreys & Matthew Style, 2022. "New sports facilities do not drive migration between US cities," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 195-217, December.
    17. Yan Song & Jiang Zhou & Yingjie Zhang & Dingxin Wu & Honghai Xu, 2022. "How Much Are Amenities Worth? An Empirical Study on Urban Land and Housing Price Differentials across Chinese Cities," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.
    18. Daniel A. Broxterman & Chun Kuang, 2019. "A revealed preference index of urban amenities: Using travel demand as a proxy," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 508-537, June.
    19. Curtis Lockwood Reynolds & Amanda L. Weinstein, 2021. "Gender differences in quality of life and preferences for location‐specific amenities across cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(5), pages 916-943, November.
    20. Roni Armis & Hidehiko Kanegae, 2020. "The attractiveness of a post-mining city as a tourist destination from the perspective of visitors: a study of Sawahlunto old coal mining town in Indonesia," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 443-461, June.
    21. Gianandrea Lanzara & G. Alfredo Minerva, 2019. "Tourism, amenities, and welfare in an urban setting," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 452-479, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internal migration; amenities; urban population growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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