Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town

by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

Older neighborhoods financially outperform newer neighborhoods. This is especially true when the older neighborhoods are pre-1930 and newer neighborhoods are post-1950. Blight is not an indicator of financial productivity. Some of the most financially productive neighborhoods are also the most blighted. While there are exceptions for highly gentrified areas, poorer neighborhoods tend to financially outperform wealthier neighborhoods. For cities with a traditional neighborhood core, the closer to the core, the higher the level of financial productivity. The more stories a building has, the greater its financial productivity tends to be. The more reliant on the automobile a development pattern is, the less financially productive it tends to be. The traditional development pattern — even when blighted and occupied by the poorest people in our communities — is financially more productive than our post-war neighborhoods, regardless of their condition. Across North America, our poor neighborhoods tend to subsidize our wealthy neighborhoods. The only places this doesn't hold true are communities where the poor have been displaced out to the edge.