Of Tracks and Trails: How Accessible Green Spaces Reshape Communities

• In Event: Cleaning the Water, Improving the Land: Policy Effects

Abstract

What happens to neighborhoods after urban greening takes root? In the United States, over 26,000 miles of abandoned rail lines have been converted into trails, with another 9,000 miles underway. I use the geography of abandoned railroads to study how decades of rail trail openings have changed neighborhoods. In Greater Boston, where I observe trail opening dates, housing values rise by 7% within a decade of opening, alongside a 1.8 percentage point increase in the college-educated share and little change in other socioeconomic measures. By the second decade, housing values rise by 19%, the college-educated share by 7.7 points, and household incomes by 14%, suggesting that early compositional shifts amplify over time. Across all metropolitan areas, where I observe rail trails but not date of opening, I instrument for trail creation using inefficiently connected historical rail segments, identified by edge betweenness centrality. Long-difference estimates show that between 1970 and 2020, tracts with rail trails experienced 20% higher housing value growth and similar patterns of sorting, along with a 24% increase in housing supply.

Author

• Xiyue Li, Harvard University
  Presenting Author