Economic development in the inner city

Abstract

This dissertation is comprised of three sections related to the development challenges in the inner city. It begins with an examination of retail opportunities in the inner city then moves to some of the issues with development hurdles in the inner city and finally looking at the impact to housing with respect to hazardous properties. The fundamental theme linking these topics together is highlighting opportunities for development of overlooked areas. Given the recent focus on inner city areas this dissertation provides some rational for investment in often overlooked sights. The first segment examines the outflow of funds from economically challenged areas. While the inner city areas struggle to provide goods and services to their residents an opportunity arises for public institutions as an information provider. By highlighting those areas with the greatest need retail gaps can be narrowed in these areas. Building on the first segment, the second contribution focuses on environmentally damaged properties often found in economically challenged areas. This section surveys investors to determine the significant premium placed on environmentally damaged sites. This investigation is crucial in understanding the extra burden placed on investors of environmentally damaged sites. Finally, the impact of environmentally damaged sites on housing values is examined in the concluding section of this dissertation. To determine the impact an examination of current spatial economic modeling is performed. While examining these impacts a new approach to modeling the spatial impacts is tested. The resulting model improves the forecasting power of the traditional hedonic models.