Exploring the empirical relationship between inner-city blight and urban sprawl in the United States

• Main Authors: FESSELMEYER, Eric, SEAH, Kiat Ying
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
• Subjects: Urban blight; urban sprawl; externalities; land-use regulations; American Studies; Urban Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/23; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1022/viewcontent/ch1.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.