Neighborhood status and housing development: Evidence from urban development decisions in the Netherlands

This paper empirically examines the relation between the initial socio-economic status of neighborhoods and subsequent housing development in the Netherlands from 2013 to 2020. We generate a unique dataset by combining registry data on housing construction and demolition in the Netherlands with a novel spatio-temporal clustering methodology. This approach allows us to identify and classify individual housing development projects. The findings in this paper show that the likelihood that a housing development occurs is equal across neighborhoods that differ in terms of their initial socio-economic status. However, this finding masks heterogeneity across different types of housing development projects, with some that are more prevalent in high-income neighborhoods, and others in low-income neighborhoods.