Sprawl and Blight

Jan K. Brueckner () and Robert W. Helsley ()

No CESifo Working Paper No. 2792, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Group Munich

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to show how the same market failures that contribute to urban sprawl also contribute to urban blight. The paper develops a simple dynamic model in which new suburban and older central-city properties compete for mobile residents. The level of housing services generated by older properties depends on current maintenance or reinvest-ment expenditures. In this setting, market failures that reduce the cost of occupying suburban locations, thus leading to excessive suburban development, also depress central-city housing prices and undermine maintenance incentives, leading to deficient levels of central-city rein-vestment. Corrective policies that shift population from the suburbs to the center result in higher levels of reinvestment in central-city housing, therefore reducing blight.

Keywords: urban sprawl; blight; market failures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cesifo.de/DocCIDL/cesifo1_wp2792.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2792

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Group Munich
Address: Poschingerstrasse 5, 81679 Munich
Series data maintained by Julio Saavedra ().