"Interrupted development": The effects of blighted neighborhoods and topographic barriers on cities.
详细信息
文摘
Land available for housing in cities is often restricted by topographic barriers, zoning regulations, parks and open space, blighted neighborhoods, brownfields, etc. These are all examples of a generic phenomenon that will be termed "interrupted development." Interrupted development is important because it not only affects the residents living near the undeveloped area, it also lowers overall efficiency of the city by increasing commuting distance, lowering general accessibility, and inhibiting urbanization economies based on proximity. This dissertation analyzes, both theoretically and empirically, the effects of interrupted development on the spatial structure of cities. Furthermore, it measures the full social cost of spatial interruptions, including both the changes in the welfare of city residents and urban land owners.;The effects of interrupted development are first analyzed using an open city model with positive agglomeration economies in production. In the long run, interrupted development may have significant real effects on such a city, beyond the nominal proportional change in output and employment implied when a given percentage of land is removed.;Using a closed city model, the efficiency of the urban land market in providing incentives to remove interruptions to development is evaluated by comparing the private benefit of removing interrupted development to the social gain from having more land for housing. Overall findings suggest that urban land markets may or may not provide appropriate incentives for removing interrupted development depending on the circumstances of the city. Particularly for cities whose highway systems have significant congestion externalities, land market incentives to remove interrupted development may be significantly less than the social cost of the interruption. The location and amount of interrupted development is also an important determinant of the ratio of social to private benefit which tends to rise with the distance of the interruption from the center of the city and with the extent of interrupted development in the city.;An empirical test using bodies of water as an example of exogenous interrupted development is implemented. The test results are consistent with the findings derived in the closed city simulation models.