Smart growth as a luxury amenity? Exploring the relationship between the marketing of smart growth characteristics and neighborhood racial and income change

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the association between neighborhood change trajectories and the use of latent smart growth and sprawl words in real estate listings through a series of exploratory analyses. We address questions such as how, where, and to whom smart growth and sprawl type neighborhood characteristics have been advertised by neighborhood typologies, through time. In a case study on the Charlotte, North Carolina metropolitan area between 2001 and 2020, we find a positive association between the marketing of sprawl characteristics mentioned in property listings of a neighborhood and an increasing share of minority applicants and a positive relationship between the marketing of smart growth characteristics, income, and higher-end housing amenities. The spatial and temporal patterns of the marketing of smart growth in real estate listings correspond to broader trends that have occurred across metropolitan areas in the past few decades with the increasing suburbanization of lower-income and minority residents, and an increasing preference for urban, walkable areas among residents of higher socioeconomic status.