Housing and Neighbourhood Dynamics: A Simulation Study (Economic Studies): 157 (Harvard Economic Studies) - Hardcover

Kain, John F.; Apgar, William C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674409302 ISBN 13: 9780674409309

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1985

Synopsis

This book assesses the effects of spatially concentrated programs for housing and neighborhood improvement. These programs provide direct assistance to low–income property owners in an attempt to arrest neighborhood decline and encourage revitalization.

The authors used the Harvard Urban Development Simulation Model (HUDS) in evaluating these programs. HUDS, a large–scale computer model, represents the process of housing rehabilitation, the production and consumption of housing services, household moving decisions, and other determinant of neighborhood change. The model simulates the behavior of approximately 80,000 individual households in two hundred residential neighborhoods of various quality levels. Unlike more aggregate models of urban development, HUDS has the capacity to identify how specific housing policies affect individual households as well as particular neighborhoods.

Since program evaluations are no better than the models on which they are based, the authors provide sufficient detail to permit those readers primarily interested in the policy analysis to assess the methodology and to understandhow the policies are represented in the model; a more technical discussion of the model is then presented in appendixes.

Although the simulations focus on policies that induce central–city property owners to upgrade their properties and thus stimulate revitalization, many of the authors' findings are relevant to larger issues of urban development. For example, the analysis of how housing rehabilitation subsidies affect the investment behavior of nonsubsidized property owners provides insights about the link between initial upgrading and sustained neighborhood improvement. The analysis also demonstrates how differences in location, household, and housing stock characteristics affect a particular neighborhood’s responsiveness to a common policy initiative.

About this title

About the Authors

John F. Kain was Professor of Economics, Professor of Political Economy, and Director of the Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Science and Society at the University of Texas at Dallas. He founded the Texas Schools Project.

William C. Apgar, Jr., is Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674409302
• ISBN 13: 9780674409309
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288