Urban heat and within-city residential sorting

• Main Authors: BORSKY, Stefan, FESSELMEYER, Eric, VOGELSAND, Lennart
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
• Subjects: Urban heat; Environmental justice; Sorting; Housing; Structural model; Environmental Sciences; Physical and Environmental Geography; Urban Studies
• 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
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.