Douglas S. Noonan

How US cultural districts reshape neighbourhoods

Cultural districts are an increasingly popular and important element of both urban and cultural experiences in the USA. Cultural districts get invoked as a tool for revitalising neighbourhoods and regions, cultivating arts and cultural resources, and other goals. This article briefly describes the phenomenon of cultural districts in the USA, reviews some claims made about their impacts, and provides evidence of districts effects. Neighbourhood-level statistical analyses identify socioeconomic trends in neighbourhoods affected by districts. The results reflect the heterogeneity in cultural districts and in cities experiences with them. The findings inform policies supporting creative placemaking in general and cultural districts as a system.

Policy Monitor—Green Buildings: Economics and Policies

This article presents an overview of green building economics and policies through a survey of theoretical and empirical evidence concerning green building practices. We define green building policy as policies that affect the entire life of the building, from design and construction to operation and deconstruction. We examine the economics of green buildings in the United States, with particular emphasis on market failures in the building sector such as information problems and externalities. We also discuss how policy instruments are used to address these market failures. We present original data on the types and potential impacts of these policy instruments in the United States, along with a brief review of international green building programs. We conclude by describing challenges for the empirical study of green buildings and priorities for future research and policy in this area.

Flood disaster management policy: an analysis of the United States Community Ratings System

In 1990 the US Federal Emergency Management Agency created the Community Ratings System (CRS) to engage local governments to enhance community flood resilience. The CRS encourages community flood risk management activities by discounting flood insurance premiums commensurate with the level of flood management measures implemented. Using a national sample of communities, this study empirically identifies factors motivating both communities’ decision to participate and intensity of participation in the CRS. The results indicate that local capacity, flood risk factors, socio-economic characteristics, and political economy factors are significant predictors of CRS participation. Further, factors predicting participation in the CRS differ from factors predicting CRS scores.

Philanthropic Support of National Parks Analysis Using the Social-Ecological Systems Framework

Ostrom’s social-ecological systems (SES) framework infrequently has been applied to civil society research. But its focus on collective action may help explain why some national parks are more successful at attracting philanthropic resources to supplement stagnant public funding. We examine two types of charitable supporting organizations: “Friends of” Groups (FOGs), which typically emphasize fundraising, and Cooperating Associations (CAs), which typically emphasize visitor support. We identify their partnership patterns across more than 300 national park units. Our findings suggest that FOGs and CAs fill different niches. CAs are drawn to more popular parks or memorials, and FOGs are found in parks with smaller budgets or offering fewer activities. Actor characteristics play a secondary role in explaining nonprofit incidence. The holistic approach of the SES perspective demonstrates the importance of connecting resource systems to institutional settings and actor attributes.

Who Goes Freelance? The Determinants of Self-Employment for Artists:

This study examines the self-employment behavior of artists. Using data from the Current Population Survey between 2003 and 2015, we estimate a series of logit models to predict transitions from paid employment to self-employment in the arts. The results show that artists disproportionately freelance and frequently switch in and out of self-employment compared to all other professional workers. We also find that artists exhibit unique entrepreneurial profiles, particularly in terms of their demographic and employment characteristics. In particular, artist workers are considerably more likely to attain self-employment status when living in a city with a high saturation of artist occupations.

Characteristics of Voluntary Behavior in the Neighborhood Commons The Case of Dog Parks

The neighborhood commons, and dog parks in particular, provide a good laboratory to explore the drivers of voluntarism and trust, as well as the situational and demographic correlates that promote or inhibit voluntarism. This analysis connects a central theme of Ostrom’s work on institutions for overcoming social dilemmas to the literature on voluntary actions and the health of small communities. Survey results from more than 500 users of 14 dog parks in the Atlanta area are examined to understand how variation in park and user characteristics predict variation in individual contributions to the commons, including pro-social attitudes and behavior and dispute resolution behavior. Our analysis shows how institutions foster community commons, which are correlated with both voluntarism and the voluntary enforcement of norms on users. These results from a study in the field contribute to a growing literature that explores the circumstances for successful voluntary supply and maintenance of public goods.

Flood Risk Management: Exploring the Impacts of the Community Rating System Program on Poverty and Income Inequality

Flooding remains a major problem for the United States, causing numerous deaths and damaging countless properties. To reduce the impact of flooding on communities, the U.S. government established the Community Rating System (CRS) in 1990 to reduce flood damages by incentivizing communities to engage in flood risk management initiatives that surpass those required by the National Flood Insurance Program. In return, communities enjoy discounted flood insurance premiums. Despite the fact that the CRS raises concerns about the potential for unevenly distributed impacts across different income groups, no study has examined the equity implications of the CRS. This study thus investigates the possibility of unintended consequences of the CRS by answering the question: What is the effect of the CRS on poverty and income inequality? Understanding the impacts of the CRS on poverty and income inequality is useful in fully assessing the unintended consequences of the CRS. The study estimates four fixed-effects regression models using a panel data set of neighborhood-level observations from 1970 to 2010. The results indicate that median incomes are lower in CRS communities, but rise in floodplains. Also, the CRS attracts poor residents, but relocates them away from floodplains. Additionally, the CRS attracts top earners, including in floodplains. Finally, the CRS encourages income inequality, but discourages income inequality in floodplains. A better understanding of these unintended consequences of the CRS on poverty and income inequality can help to improve the design and performance of the CRS and, ultimately, increase community resilience to flood disasters.

The closer the better? Examining support for a large urban redevelopment project in Atlanta

ABSTRACT The Atlanta BeltLine (BeltLine) is a large urban redevelopment project that is transforming 22 miles of historical railroad corridors into parks, trails, pedestrian-friendly transit, and affordable housing in the center of Atlanta, Georgia. This study examines how proximity to the BeltLine and other factors relate to public support for it, with data from a general public survey conducted in the summer of 2009. The result shows that support significantly declines as distance to the BeltLine increases. However, after controlling for expected use of the BeltLine parks and transit, the role of distance fades. Further, the results show that being a parent within the city limits is associated with the support for the BeltLine, which implies that the concern over tax increment financing (TIF) affecting future school quality hampers the support of the project. The findings point to individual tastes and family circumstances as driving support for the redevelopment project, rather than strictly property-specific attributes (as the homevoter hypothesis would predict). Another contribution of this study is to address the technical problem of missing precise spatial location values. Several imputation techniques are used to demonstrate the risks and remedies to missing spatial data.

For what it's worth: evaluating revealed preferences for green certification

In a case study that examines the outcomes of a flexible information-based policy, we observe how organizations obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. We use a regression discontinuity analysis to identify practices used to upgrade certification tiers. This analysis reveals preferences for green certification strategies and, we argue, intimates the perceived motivations for green certification. We distinguish practices that potentially confer private gains through returns to efficiency and productivity investments, from practices that only provide public benefits. Data show that organizations strategically certify to avoid high-cost resource use, appeal to key stakeholders, and communicate building and organization quality. Builders upgrading to the highest tiers are more likely to deploy practices with private gains. Results suggest a willingness to extend short time horizons associated with energy-efficiency investments in exchange for marketing benefits. Our discussion notes the capacity for certifications to mitigate market barriers associated with the energy-efficiency gap.

The many dimensions of historic preservation value: national and local designation, internal and external policy effects

Abstract This analysis examines the internal and external policy effects of national and local register programmes for historic preservation. Robust hedonic pricing models are crucial to informing policy proposals and understanding how property markets relate to urban heritage. Estimating a repeat-sales hedonic model with neighbourhood trends and spatial mixed models, novel to this literature, offers a marked improvement in terms of jointly identifying internal and external policy effects, comparing national and local designations, separating policy from heritage effects and estimating models robust to spatial dependence and trends in hedonic prices. Historic designation variables, while often individually insignificant in the model, are always jointly significant in explaining varying appreciation rates. Local districts exhibit no consistent price impacts across the models. Being located inside a national district confers a price premium that increases over time in the preferred model specification, while prices fall in national districts’ buffers after designation. The sensitivity of results to model specification raises questions about alternative approaches to spatial dependence in the data in the urban historic preservation context. Evidence of the influence of historic district designation on property turnover and renovation investments is also examined.