Urban heat and within-city residential sorting

This study presents new causal evidence on how urban heat contributes to sorting within a city. We estimate a discrete choice residential sorting model that includes census-tract fixed effects and controls for open space and green coverage to analyze how differences in urban heat at the census-tract...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: BORSKY, Stefan, FESSELMEYER, Eric, VOGELSAND, Lennart
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/256
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1255/viewcontent/1_s2.0_S0095069624000883_pvoa_cc_by.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:This study presents new causal evidence on how urban heat contributes to sorting within a city. We estimate a discrete choice residential sorting model that includes census-tract fixed effects and controls for open space and green coverage to analyze how differences in urban heat at the census-tract level influence the location choices of New York City homeowners given their race, ethnicity, and income. Our results show clear patterns of residential sorting, with whites and high-income households outcompeting other racial/ethnic groups and low-income households for housing in cooler neighborhoods. Our counterfactual exercise, inspired by Cool Neighborhoods NYC, reveals that heat-mitigation policies can make poorer and minority households, on average, worse off. These findings are striking, considering that such programs often aim to enhance welfare in heat-exposed neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by low-income and minority households.