NYU Furman Center Spring Speaker Series: Leah Brooks
Please join the NYU Furman Center for a lunchtime presentation:
Why Not "Instant Urban Renewal"? Destruction, Policy and the Evolving Consequences of Washington, DC's 1968 Civil Disturbance
with
Dr. Leah Brooks, Associate Professor
Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University
Monday, March 21st from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. ET
Please register using this link.
Fundamental urban change requires redevelopment; in practice, redevelopment is rare and difficult. In this paper, Dr. Leah Brooks and co-authors examine the redevelopment response to the large-scale destruction wrought by the 1968 civil disturbance in Washington, DC, in which more than 1,000 properties burned. Relying on the quasi-random variation in destruction within blocks, the researchers find that destroyed lots took roughly 30 years to converge, as measured by presence of a structure, and even longer when measured by the value of capital in place. Furthermore, this redevelopment has a very striking pattern: redevelopment in the two decades following the destruction was relatively low value, and redevelopment in the later half was high value. Dr. Brooks and co-authors explore these results with a framework with private developers with profit motives and government development motivated by household welfare. This framework suggests, as they observe, that the government should aim to stop private land owners from holding land to develop later by making large scale purchases. The framework also motivates why early development is largely by non-profits and later development is by for-profit developers. Finally, the researchers conclude by showing that this type of redevelopment yields neighborhoods that are anomalously heterogeneous in value relative to the rest of the city. Read the paper here.
About the Presenter: Leah Brooks is Associate Professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University and Director of the university’s Center for Washington Area Studies. After receiving her PhD from UCLA in 2005, she taught at the University of Toronto and McGill University, and worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Her work to date includes examination of Business Improvement Districts and land assembly to understand the resolution of collective action problems, analysis of the Community Development Block Grant program to understand the political economy of grant giving at the municipal and sub-municipal levels, an investigation of the long-run impacts of streetcar investments in Los Angeles on urban form, and an analysis of whether and why US infrastructure costs have increased. She is currently working on understanding the long-run impacts of Washington, DC’s 1968 civil disturbance and the impact of ecommerce on how retail establishments cluster. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Economics, the National Tax Journal, and Real Estate Economics.
This event is open to members of the NYU community. Please register by clicking this RSVP link.