Spatial clustering of property abandonment in shrinking cities: a case study of targeted demolition in Buffalo, NY’s African American neighborhoods

ABSTRACT

Many low-income and minority-concentrated neighborhoods have been struggling for decades with the acute problem of endemic abandonment in shrinking cities. Using high-resolution spatial–temporal data, this study attempts to extend our understanding of the influence of abandonment on future abandonment and the impact of interventions such as demolition by identifying spatial patterns of housing abandonment and demolition in Buffalo, New York when the city invested heavily in an aggressive 5-in-5 demolition plan targeting predominantly African American neighborhoods with high rates of abandonment. Our results confirmed that the clustering of abandoned properties has been consistently confined to the city's majority African American east side neighborhood. We found a higher level of duress housing sales on the east side after the 5-in-5 plan's implementation. In essence, 5-in-5 was a demolition and slum clearance policy akin to mid-twentieth-century urban renewal programs focusing on removing blighted properties without a concomitant revitalization component.

KEYWORD:

• Property abandonment
• demolition
• majority African American neighborhoods
• shrinking cities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Details of the report: https://s4.ad.brown.edu/Projects/Diversity/segregation2010/city.aspx?cityid=3611000

2 We selected data available at the address level as a proxy for abandonment. In some prior research (Silverman et al., 2013 ; Weaver & Knight, 2018), HUD aggregate USPS administrative data on address vacancies was used as a proxy for abandonment. However, the USPS data is only released at the census tract level, which precludes the type of micro analysis applied in here.

3 The in-rem process and data used to examine Buffalo is similar to other data used to analyze tax foreclosure auctions in cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, Flint, and Gary (Hackworth, 2014; Dewar et al., 2015; Seymour & Akers, 2021; Seymour & Akers, 2022).