Fiscal Zoning, Small Homes, and the Property Tax: Evidence from Massachusetts and Chicago

The objective of this research project is to spatially examine the effects of zoning policies with respect to changes in land use and demographics to understand the role of zoning in shaping and influencing racial and economic segregation in the Chicago metropolitan region from 1920 through 2010. The significance of this work is to contribute to the literature on the evolution of urban environments with a focus on how municipal zoning policies from the 1920s through the present day have influenced urban land use and helped to shape and preserve patterns of racism and economic segregation. The longitudinal aspect of the study allows for a controlled comparison of demographic and land use data collected before zoning policies were established to collected data after zoning implementation. The methodology includes: data collection and the creation of databases for data from 1920 through 2010; an analysis of demographic, socio-economic and land use changes from 1920 through 2010; and a statistical regression analysis of zoning policies and the relationship to land use patterns and demographics from 1920 through 2010. The databases created contain: land use data using aerial photographs digitized with descriptive polygons (for example: developed, bare, forested, other); demographic data using individual decennial census records from the Minnesota Population Center for the 1920, 1930 and 1940 census, and using aggregated public census data for the 1960 through 2010 censuses with all census data geocoded, mapped and aggregated to census blocks; zoning data using digitized maps with descriptive polygons. The historical census records from the Minnesota Population Center are cleaned by matching database files with historical census records to make sure no error will be conducted when geocoding the records. Massey & Denton and Turner, Gardner, & O’Neill’s landscape pattern metrics and local analysis of spatial association (LISA) are used for analyzing change. The enumeration districts of Illinois 1920, 1930, and 1940 will be used to analyze the patterns of the changing demographics of individuals. Ward and Enumeration districts of 1920, 1930, and 1940 are digitized and georeferenced from the images provided by alookatcook.com. Projected results and conclusions will produce a database which will be used to quantify the evolution of spatial distribution of land use and demographics and will also identify if a causal relationship exists between metropolitan zoning policies trends in land use and racial and economic segregation