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Advancing Our Understanding of Rail Transit Impacts

The research presented on this website investigates the role that public investments in rail transit play in shaping urban income segregation. The unifying framework of the different papers traces how public investment such as transit participates through land values, residential location decisions, neighborhood outcomes, and the reshaping of the urban social landscape. Through a mixed-methods and multi-scalar research design, the research brings to light the under-studied residential mobility aspect of the process.

The quantitative component of the analysis looks at several measurable conditions:

1. Residential mobility out of neighborhoods where new transit stations have been built.
2. Determine if low-income residents have a higher propensity to exit station areas after transit is constructed than other types of residents.
3. Determine where low-income residents relocate to determine if existing locations of socioeconomic disadvantage are becoming more entrenched.
4. Quantify metropolitan-wide income segregation trends following new rail transit investments to determine where and for which income groups segregation is increasing or decreasing.
5. Comprehensive qualitative case study to reveal causal mechanisms driving the results. Questions centered around the role of government and outside agents on neighborhood change, reasons residents stay or leave, and transit-induced displacement and gentrification.
   1. Surveys with 514 residents living in neighborhoods adjacent to the rail.
   2. Two rounds of focus groups with 75 residents.
   3. Interviews with 15 leaders in planning, development, and real estate.
   4. Content Analysis of 86 local news articles related to the rail.