City cents: Tracking the spatial imprint of urban public expenditures

Abstract

Where is public money for place-based improvement spent? A common narrative is that public expenditure prioritizes business and development interests at the expense of disadvantaged areas that have the greatest need. This paper is a quantified look at this question—an analysis of spending patterns at the neighborhood level. The spatial analysis of public expenditure at the neighborhood level is surprisingly rare, in part because the data is not conducive to locational assessment at a detailed level. We posit three explanations for the pattern of expenditure: efficiency, pro-development, or equity/need. We find that place-based public expenditure in Chicago is unrelated to efficiency or equity/need, and mostly follows a pattern of spatial selectivity in which business and economic development are prioritized, primarily in and around the central business district and higher income residential areas. Our study augments earlier findings in that funding is considered in a spatially explicit manner at a highly disaggregated level of analysis.