Gentrification and Neighborhood Change: Evidence from Yelp
64 Pages Posted: 23 Dec 2020
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Gentrification and Neighborhood Change: Evidence from Yelp
Gentrification and Neighborhood Change: Evidence from Yelp
Date Written: December 18, 2020
Abstract
How does gentrification transform neighborhoods? Gentrification can harm current residents by increasing rental costs and by eliminating old amenities, including distinctive local stores. Rising rents represent redistribution from tenants to landlords and can therefore be offset with targeted transfers, but the destruction of neighborhood character can – in principle – reduce overall social surplus. Using Census and Yelp data from five cities, we document that while gentrification is associated with an increase in the number of retail establishments overall, it is also associated with higher rates of business closure and higher rates of transition to higher price points. In Chicago and Los Angeles especially, non-gentrifying poorer communities have dramatically lower turnover than richer or gentrifying communities. However, the primary transitions appear to the replacement of stores that sell tradable goods with stores that sell non-tradable services. That transition just seems to be slower in poor communities that do not gentrify. Consequently, the business closures that come with gentrification seem to reflect the global impact of electronic commerce more than the replacement of idiosyncratic neighborhood services with generic luxury goods.
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