How do upzonings impact neighborhood demographic change? Examining the link between land use policy and gentrification in New York City

Abstract

As cities across the country face mounting pressures to address the housing affordability crisis, planners and policymakers have increasingly eyed upzonings as an instrument to alleviate rising housing costs. Yet, upzonings have emerged as a site of deep conflict, driving a wedge between groups advocating for supply-side solutions and those calling for added tenant protections and affordable housing preservation. Upzoning advocates–many affiliated with the yes-in-my-backyard (YIMBY) movement–have argued that in allowing for denser development, upzonings will help to lift artificial restrictions on supply and lower housing prices in the long run. Opponents, often representing tenant interests, have countered that upzonings will accelerate gentrification and displacement pressures. Despite these cleavages about the effects of upzonings on gentrification and displacement, minimal empirical research to date has examined the link between upzonings and neighborhood demographic change. To help fill this gap in the literature, this paper examines how upzoning activity is associated with subsequent change in the non-Hispanic white population in New York City between 2000 and 2010. Using New York as a case study, this paper finds that upzoning activity is positively and significantly associated with the odds of a census tract becoming whiter, suggesting that neighborhood upzonings might accelerate, rather than temper, gentrification pressures in the short term.