Neighborhood Quality-of-Life Dynamics and the Great Recession: The Case of Charlotte, North Carolina

Abstract

This paper examines neighborhood responses to the business cycle of the decade 1999–2009. Utilizing a quality-of-life (QoL) framework to profile neighborhoods in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, we investigate with a Markov-chain methodology how the process of change was impacted by short-term economic fluxes including the greatest downturn since the Great Depression. Results indicate that neighborhoods falling within the lowest QoL category exhibited the greatest boost in relative upward mobility in the boom leading up to the recession. Many of these same neighborhoods reverted back to their previous conditions once the recession hit. Overall, neighborhood resilience is context dependent and so is neighborhood response to exogenous shocks. The same patterns did not hold true when the QoL index was decomposed into its four comprising dimensions.