Using Emerging Hot Spot Analysis to Explore Spatiotemporal Patterns of Housing Vacancy in Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Areas

Abstract

We highlight the use of a newer method—emerging hot spot analysis of space-time cubes from defined locations—for examining the spread of housing vacancy in large Ohio MSAs. Using this method, we discovered that many Ohio MSAs concurrently experienced spread, contraction, and vacancy stabilization in census tracts located adjacent to, or within close proximity of, one another. These results indicate that vacancy proliferation is not solely a matter of geographic determinism, whereby high vacancy in one tract predicts high vacancy in neighboring tracts in future years. We also found that vacancy spread at the tract level is associated with population dynamics at the neighborhood, city, and MSA levels. Our findings suggest that vacancy reduction initiatives should account for population trends at various geographic scales, not just physical conditions within a particular neighborhood or tract.