Exploring the empirical relationship between inner-city blight and urban sprawl in the United States
Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2022
Abstract
Urban blight has been found to cause a variety of problems, including negatively affecting the value of surrounding properties and increasing neighborhood crime rates. If the same externalities that give rise to urban sprawl also contribute to urban blight, as is suggested by Brueckner and Helsley (2011), city center vacancy rates-an indication of blight-would increase with the extent of urban sprawl. This study adds to the sparse literature on the empirical relationship between urban sprawl and blight by finding that the city-center census tract vacancy rate is higher in more sprawling cities. The results of this article, therefore, provide support for the argument that policies designed to contain urban sprawl could have the advantage of also mitigating urban blight.
Keywords
Urban blight, urban sprawl, externalities, land-use regulations
Discipline
American Studies | Urban Studies
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
Publication
Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research
Volume
24
Issue
2
First Page
9
Last Page
21
ISSN
1939-1935
Publisher
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Citation
FESSELMEYER, Eric and SEAH, Kiat Ying.
Exploring the empirical relationship between inner-city blight and urban sprawl in the United States. (2022). Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. 24, (2), 9-21.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/23
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48680614