More than 19 percent of people in American central cities are poor. In suburbs, just 7.5 percent of people live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to come from wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap (the traditional explanation of...

Carbon dioxide emissions may create significant social harm because of global warming, yet American urban development tends to be in low density areas with very hot summers. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the carbon dioxide emissions associated with new construction in different locations...

Growing cities, featuring more people with higher incomes who live and work in the suburbs and commute by private vehicle, should be a recipe for increased air pollution. Instead, California's major polluted urban areas have experienced sharp improvements in air quality. Technological advance...

Traditional explanations for why some communities block new housing construction focus on incumbent home owner incentives to block entry. Local resident political ideology may also influence community permitting decisions. This paper uses city level panel data across California metropolitan...

Beijing's housing market has boomed over the last fifteen years. The city's population grew by 40.6% and per capita income (in constant RMB) by 273.9% from 1991 to 2005. Using two geocoded data sets, we present new evidence on the real estate price gradient, land price gradient, population...

Recent studies provide conflicting evidence on the connection between ethnic or racial neighborhood segregation and outcomes. Some studies find that residence in an enclave is beneficial, some reach the opposite conclusion, and still others imply that any relationship is small. One hypothesis is...