Contact: [email protected]
This research project was originally submitted as the term paper to UP 460 Transportation/Land Use Policy at the University of Illinoist at Urbana-Champaign on December 18th, 2020. It was later nominated by Dr. Bumsoo Lee, a tenured Professor of Urban Planning at University of Illinois, to the 2021 APA Transportation Planning Division Student Paper Competition
Note: The size of raw data is 1.01 GB beyond the file limit of 100 MB on GitHub, so that it is not uploaded. Please contact the author if you would like to access the raw data. A list of data sources can be found in the final report.
Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained popularity as a means of redressing a series of urban problems. TOD has, however, also been criticized for potentially posing risks for neighborhood equity and affordability. In order to research the validity of these concerns, the author utilizes a multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis that investigates whether and the extent to which the presence of Light Rail Transit (LRT) station areas, especially those in the core city of a county, is associated with housing cost burdens.
The analysis is conducted for the neighborhood change between 2000 and 2010 in 2 counties—Multnomah County and Los Angeles County that built light rail transit systems since the 1980s. Results show no statistically significant evidence of more housing cost burdens around LRT station areas in both counties, even for those that are located in their core central cities, Portland and Los Angeles respectively. Hence, the study confirms the positive benefits of transit-oriented developments without more risks posing danger to equity and affordability.
On the other hand, the author recognizes the limitations of the MLR analysis and recommends alternative modeling methods such as the spatial autoregressive model for future research on this topic. The author also emphasizes the necessity of taking into consideration the effect of other unobserved factors. One of the major unobserved factors the author mentions is policies that promote affordable housing. The author believes if connecting with adequate affordable housing policies, equity can be further ensured in neighborhoods under transit-oriented developments.
Keywords: housing cost burdens, neighborhood change, light rail transit (LRT), transit-oriented development (TOD)