Essays in Urban and Spatial Economics Sherrie Cheng

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Cheng, Sherrie, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Economics., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

0501.

0511.

0709.

0999.

Local Subjects:

0501.

0511.

0709.

0999.

Physical Description:

1 electronic resource (139 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-07A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2025

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This dissertation studies the removal of an urban highway and quantifies how the policy affects nearby neighborhoods and the welfare of city residents. Using a difference-in-differences event study, I first document large and persistent local changes following the partial removal of the Inner Loop in Rochester, New York. Within one year of closure, treated neighbourhoods gained 12.03 residents on average, about 12.6 percent relative to pre-removal means, with the effect attenuating to roughly 7 percent by 2019. These increases are driven primarily by White and higher income residents. Property values in treated areas rose by nearly $21,000 two years after removal, equivalent to 9.4 percent of the average treated property's assessed value. I find no detectable effects on local employment levels or on the spatial distribution of jobs. I also present suggestive evidence that highway traffic was diverted to substitute surface roads.To interpret these patterns and evaluate welfare, I build a quantitative spatial model with endogenous traffic and congestion that incorporates heterogeneity by race and income. The model features residents who choose where to live and which route to take, and it allows highway proximity and neighborhood racial composition to enter preferences as amenities. I recast the model's choice probabilities into a common "mean utility" component and a component which varies with demographic characteristics. I then adapt tools from the demand estimation literature to estimate the model's parameters by inverting residential shares. This approach allows me to include rich heterogeneity in preferences which delivers more realistic substitution patterns across neighborhoods and routes, crucial for credible welfare analysis.With the estimated model in hand, I quantify and decompose how the Inner Loop's removal affected commuting costs, neighbourhood amenities, and welfare. In the observed equilibrium, only 5.3 percent of residence-workplace pairs experience higher expected commuting costs, but the increases are highly concentrated: 83 percent of residential neighborhoods see higher costs to at least one destination, with the largest penalties near the removed segment and for routes that previously relied on it. At the same time, the removal raises local amenities in treated areas, and these gains are capitalized into higher housing prices.The decomposition shows that eliminating the highway itself increases welfare by about 11.5 percent, and allowing observed neighborhood amenities to adjust adds about 18.9 percent. Two forces offset much of these gains. First, capitalization of improved amenities into housing prices reduces welfare by roughly 24.7 percent. Second, equilibrium resorting over neighborhood composition yields an additional welfare loss of about 1.5 percent. Changes in expected commuting costs are small, on the order of 0.1 percent. Aggregating these components, the net effect of removing Inner Loop East is modestly negative on citywide welfare by 2019, but this aggregate masks substantial distributional heterogeneity: non White residents gain about 16.7 percent (low income) and 14.5 percent (high income), while White residents experience smaller gains from amenities and larger losses from higher local prices, resulting in net changes of about 3 percent (low income) and 12 percent (high income). All groups lose slightly from resorting. Together, the results indicate that removing highways from urban centers can improve amenities and welfare for some groups, but overall welfare and distributional consequences depend critically on local demographics, pre-existing traffic conditions, changes in amenities, and housing market responses

Notes:

Advisors: Sieg, Holger Committee members: Castillo, Juan Camilo; Duranton, Gilles; Lin, Jeffrey

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-07, Section: A.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2025

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798276001883

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license