As cities across the United States grapple with soaring housing costs, planners and policymakers have argued that upzonings are key to addressing rising housing unaffordability. Upzonings, or alterations to municipal zoning regulations allowing for increased development capacity, are expected to spur additional housing production, relieve housing demand, lower housing costs, and ultimately improve racial and economic integration. Although cities and states have started to consider upzonings as part of official housing policy agendas, minimal research to date has explored the factors that could alternately further or frustrate upzoning’s objectives of improving housing affordability and racial and economic segregation. Seeking to fill part of this gap in the literature, this dissertation explores how upzoning unfolds in three different contexts (Austin, TX; Newton, MA; and New York, NY), exploring how local context shapes the extent to which upzoning will reach these objectives.
The first essay, “How do upzonings impact neighborhood demographic change? Examining the link between land use policy and gentrification in New York City,” investigates how upzonings relate to neighborhood racial change in New York City. The second essay, “How does real estate investor ownership mediate accessory dwelling unit (ADU) asking rents? Evidence from Austin, TX” explores how the involvement of differently situated actors in the real estate market impacts the affordability of accessory dwelling units. The third essay, “Upzoning and the homevoter hypothesis: Evidence from Massachusetts,” examines the extent to which incumbent homeowners will seek to capitalize on upzoning-induced financial gains and take advantage of a proposed jurisdiction-wide upzoning.
Collectively, findings from this dissertation indicate that whether upzoning will be successful (i.e., whether it will deliver its promised benefits of improved housing affordability and reduced racial and economic segregation) likely will hinge on prevailing real estate market conditions, as well as differentiated market responses to upzoning from different actors in the real estate industry. These findings are relevant to planners and policymakers because they indicate that upzoning may not unfold similarly in all contexts, but rather that real estate market conditions and uneven market responses to upzoning will shape the extent to which upzoning delivers its expected benefits.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/nykh-z509 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Davis, Jennifer M. |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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