Elasticity and urban vacancy: A longitudinal comparison of U.S. cities
Introduction
Cities are composed of an external frontier, comprised of open lands outside of urban boundaries, and an internal frontier, characterized by obsolete spaces inside urban areas (Berger, 2007). The degree to which these two frontiers have demarcated their space is largely related to population and land use changes within and outside the city's boundaries (Rusk, 2003, Shetty and Reid, 2014). Urban boundaries frame civic processes; their reconfigurations contribute to vacant land pattern changes. However, the effect of shifting urban boundaries through expansion (elasticity) or contraction/stability (inelasticity) on a city's supply of vacant space remains uncertain (Genske and Ruff, 2006, Rusk, 2006, Meligrana, 2007).
Inelastic cities have fixed sizes due to growth boundaries, natural borders, or some other political mechanism while elastic cities have expanding boundaries through annexation or other political processes (Farris, 2001). The quantity, characteristics, and location of vacant/abandoned urban parcels are not immutable—they change based on multiple interrelated factors. A vacant parcel can become active, or an active parcel vacant. This fluidity can make vacant/abandoned lots difficult to study, especially longitudinally. Factors widely discussed as contributing to increased supplies of vacant urban land include land population alterations (Lindsey, 2007, Rieniets, 2009), deindustrialization (Buhnik, 2010, Németh and Langhorst, 2014), economic downturns (Ryan, 2012), urban sprawl (Audirac, 2007, Rybczynski and Linneman, 1999), and globalization (Cunningham-Sabot and Fol, 2009, Henry et al., 2001). The effects of urban elasticity, however, remain unclear. This research seeks to remedy this literature gap by analyzing how elasticity affects urban vacancies (UV) using vacant addresses as a measure. Vacant addresses are defined as addresses that delivery staffs of the United States Postal Service (USPS) urban routes have identified as being vacant (not collecting their mail) for 90 days or longer.
Section snippets
Urbanization and elasticity
The UN (2012) projects that between 2011 and 2050, the world's population will increase by 2.3 billion; urban populations are expected to double during this time and account for approximately 67% of the world's population. Cities are expected to grow 2.5 times in area by 2030, consuming 1 million km2 (Angel et al., 2005). Moreover, current urbanization trends forecast the transformation of many large cities into megacities (Kourtit, Nijkamp, & Reid, 2014). An estimated twenty-seven megacities of
Objectives
Most attention to the UV issue has been primarily paid to older industrialized cities within the U.S. Rust Belt region where various shrinking cities exist (Couch, Karecha, Nuissl, & Rink, 2005). Rarely have studies explored vacant lots in expanding cities, mostly due to the perception of economic growth in these areas. Even less research has compared situations between elastic and inelastic cities and little to no research has examined UV longitudinally. As noted, causes of urban vacant land
Vacant address data
One of the problems with studying vacant urban land is that municipalities define “vacant” in different ways; presently, there is no all-encompassing definition (Díaz, Nahuelhual, Echeverría, & Marín, 2011). For this reason, it is difficult to identify and study UV comparatively and longitudinally (Katyoka & Wyatt, 2008). Consequently, research on vacant land must be carefully thought out with regard to data use in comparative, diachronic studies. To help alleviate this situation, we compiled
Results
Considerable differences exist between residential and business vacancy rates. Fig. 2 presents the mean vacancy rates of contracting cities and expanding cities by year. The residential vacancy rate was much lower (about 7%) than the business vacancy rate. In addition, the business vacancy rate fluctuated more than residential vacancy rate. Overall, the vacancy rate of contracting cities was lower than expanding cities (about 1% to 2%) and this gap was larger among business addresses than
Conclusions and discussion
This research sought to determine whether urban elasticity plays a significant role in contributing to UV increases, using vacant addresses as the measure. Results indicate that higher rates of urban expansion can contribute to increased UV, particularly in residential land uses. Because these results are specific to residential vacancies, elasticity may have strong effect on neighborhood housing market conditions. Although the total and business vacancy rate was not shown to have a significant
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