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Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies and Planning

Spatial Effects In Energy-Efficient Residential Hvac Technology Adoption, Douglas S. Noonan, Lin-Han Chiang Hsieh, Daniel Matisoff Jan 2011

Spatial Effects In Energy-Efficient Residential Hvac Technology Adoption, Douglas S. Noonan, Lin-Han Chiang Hsieh, Daniel Matisoff

Douglas S. Noonan

This study identifies the factors that affect the adoption behaviors for residential heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including spatial effects and other contextual characteristics. This study draws on an original data source of detailed single-family house sale records in the Greater Chicago area, spanning from 1992 to 2004. The data are analyzed at the block-group level to focus on neighborhood-level adoption patterns and highlight neighbor effects. Using spatial lag regression models, we show that spatial dependence or “contagion” exists for neighborhood adoption of energy-efficient HVACs. This result has significant implications from a policy perspective. According to our estimation …


Making – Or Picking – Winners: Evidence Of Internal And External Price Effects In Historic Preservation Policies, Douglas S. Noonan, Douglas J. Krupka Apr 2009

Making – Or Picking – Winners: Evidence Of Internal And External Price Effects In Historic Preservation Policies, Douglas S. Noonan, Douglas J. Krupka

Douglas S. Noonan

Much has been written identifying property price effects of historic preservation policies. Little attention has been paid to the possible policy endogeneity in hedonic price models. This paper outlines a general case of land use regulation in the presence of externalities and then demonstrates the usefulness of the model in an instrumental-variables estimation of a hedonic price analysis – with an application to historic preservation in Chicago. The theoretical model casts doubt on previous results concerning price effects of preservation policies. The comparative statics identify some determinants of regulation that seem, on the face of it, most unlikely to also …


Neighborhood Dynamics And The Housing Price Effects Of Spatially Targeted Economic Development Policy, Douglas J. Krupka, Douglas S. Noonan Jan 2009

Neighborhood Dynamics And The Housing Price Effects Of Spatially Targeted Economic Development Policy, Douglas J. Krupka, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

Neighborhoods are the result of a complicated interplay between residential choice, housing supply and the influences of the larger metropolitan system on its constituent parts. We model this interplay as a system of reduced-form equations in order to examine the effects of a generous spatially targeted economic development program (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on neighborhood characteristics, especially housing values. This system of equations approach allows us to compute direct effects of the policy intervention as well as the effects mediated through non-price channels such as changes in the housing stock or neighborhood demographics. In the process, we are able …


Determinants Of Historic And Cultural Landmark Designation: Why We Preserve What We Preserve, Douglas S. Noonan, Douglas J. Krupka Oct 2008

Determinants Of Historic And Cultural Landmark Designation: Why We Preserve What We Preserve, Douglas S. Noonan, Douglas J. Krupka

Douglas S. Noonan

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This paper builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow …


On Being Stuck: Looking For The Limits Of Ethics In The Built Environment, Robert Kirkman, Douglas S. Noonan Jan 2008

On Being Stuck: Looking For The Limits Of Ethics In The Built Environment, Robert Kirkman, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

We seek here to lay the groundwork for a multi-disciplinary inquiry into one aspect of the phenomenology of moral experience, which is a general project of elucidating what it is like for people to make ethical decisions in particular contexts. Taking urban and suburban environments as the context for decision making, we focus in particular on the common human experience of being stuck. Just as a person can get physically stuck while trying to crawl through a hole that is too small, people can get ethically stuck when some feature of their relationship with their context blocks or deflects their …


Empowerment Zones, Neighborhood Change And Owner-Occupied Housing, Douglas J. Krupka, Douglas S. Noonan Jan 2008

Empowerment Zones, Neighborhood Change And Owner-Occupied Housing, Douglas J. Krupka, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

This paper examines the effects of a generous, spatially-targeted economic development policy (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on local neighborhood characteristics and on the neighborhood quality of life, taking into account the interactions amongst the policy, changes in neighborhood demographics and neighborhood housing stock. Urban economic theory posits that housing prices in a small area should increase as quality of life increases, because people will be more willing to pay to live in the area, but these changes in prices and quality of life will also affect the demographics of the population through sorting and the housing stock through reinvestment. …


Urban Environments And Neighborhood Change: Exploring Urban Sorting Beyond The Featureless Plain, Douglas S. Noonan Jan 2006

Urban Environments And Neighborhood Change: Exploring Urban Sorting Beyond The Featureless Plain, Douglas S. Noonan

Douglas S. Noonan

This paper introduces environmental features explicitly into the analysis of urban residential sorting where geographic barriers can mitigate neighbor externalities. Borders between groups in equilibrium will be more stable when supported by barriers. The hypothesis that racial disparity between neighboring tracts is greater when a barrier separates them is tested for Atlanta in 1990 and 2000 and compared to previous results for Chicago. The econometric estimation accounts for spatial dependence in the data. Significant barrier effects are found for certain types of geographical features (e.g., railroads, landmarks). The effect on local racial dissimilarity of the major extension of the mass …


Superfund, Hedonics, And The Scales Of Environmental Justice, Douglas S. Noonan, Brett M. Baden, Rama Mohana Turaga Dec 2005

Superfund, Hedonics, And The Scales Of Environmental Justice, Douglas S. Noonan, Brett M. Baden, Rama Mohana Turaga

Douglas S. Noonan

The environmental justice (EJ) movement now occupies a prominent position in environmental policy. EJ is a core principle for thousands of grassroots environmental organizations, is the subject of a Presidential executive order and an office in the EPA, and recently served to frame how the nation viewed the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This paper contributes to the research on environmental equity by (a) improving on traditional environmental justice research by incorporating results from economic analyses, and (b) presenting new evidence on the distributional equity of Superfund site locations at multiple scales. Choosing the correct spatial scale for analysis continues …