EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail and Household Services

Rachel Meltzer and Jenny Schuetz

Economic Development Quarterly, 2012, vol. 26, issue 1, 73-94

Abstract: Social scientists studying the disadvantages of poor urban neighborhoods have focused on the quality of publicly provided amenities. However, the quantity and quality of local private amenities, such as grocery stores and restaurants, can also have important quality-of-life implications for neighborhood residents. In the current article, the authors develop neighborhood-level metrics of “retail access†and analyze how retail services vary across New York City neighborhoods by income and by racial composition. The authors then examine how retail services change over time, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid economic growth. Results indicate that lower income and minority neighborhoods have fewer retail establishments, smaller average establishments, a higher proportion of “unhealthy†restaurants, and in certain cases, less diversity across retail subsectors. In addition, the rate of retail growth between 1998 and 2007 has been particularly fast in neighborhoods that were initially lower valued and experienced relatively high housing price appreciation compared with the city overall.

Keywords: downtowns; economic development incentives/tools; location decisions; quality of life; state and local ED policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242411430328 (text/html)

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:sae:ecdequ:v:26:y:2012:i:1:p:73-94

DOI: 10.1177/0891242411430328

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development Quarterly
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:26:y:2012:i:1:p:73-94