“They are Building it for the Newcomers to the City”: Testing the relationship between neighborhood investment and distanced moved into a neighborhood

Keywords: Residential Mobility; Neighborhood Change; Amenities; Micro-data
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 28

Abstract

One source of tension in rapidly growing cities is often the perception from longstanding residents that new investments are tailored towards newcomers to the city. This viewpoint suggests that the needs of existing residents are secondary to spending resources on amenities and infrastructure that will cater to and continue to attract new, upper-class residents from out of town. These concerns stem from a lack of involvement by existing residents in planning processes, a history of distrust between communities of color, especially African Americans and new investments, and the deliberate strategy enacted by many cities to create cities that would attract a ‘Creative Class’ and foster economic growth. In this article, we test whether there is a relationship between how far someone has moved into a neighborhood and recent investments in that neighborhood. In other words, are those coming from out-of-town more likely to live in newer buildings and nearby other new amenities? To do so, we use a point-level new-movers dataset to model the probability that an individual moved from out of the metro-area as a function of both housing and neighborhood characteristics. Our case study is situated in the rapidly growing city of Charlotte, North Carolina.