Stratified zoning in central cities

Marc H. Vatter

Journal of Housing Economics, 2020, vol. 50, issue C

Abstract: I model a central city where citizens differ by income, and housing confers benefits on neighbors. Zoning separates citizens into neighborhoods by income. This maximizes total surplus and facilitates redistributing gains to a majoritarian governing coalition of citizens, which changes from rich to poor as the city grows. Non-members of the coalition may form suburbs. These theoretical results are supported by empirical facts compiled by Schnore and Varley (1955). It is difficult to justify stratified zoning on Paretian grounds, even when a municipal government can redistribute income. If stratified zoning is not a Pareto improvement before gains are redistributed, it will not be afterward under majority rule. Gains in total surplus increase as the distribution of income becomes less equal, which helps explain why neighborhood stratification has outpaced stratification of income in U.S cities in recent decades, as documented by Booza et al (2006) and Sampson (2016).

Keywords: Residential; Zoning; Voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R14 R21 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137720300528
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhouse:v:50:y:2020:i:c:s1051137720300528

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhe.2020.101716

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Housing Economics is currently edited by H. O. Pollakowski

More articles in Journal of Housing Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().