THE SCHOOL OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

on Thursday, April 2, 2015

1:00 – 3:00 PM
in the COA Conference Room, Room 250
will be held the

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEFENSE

for

Kyungsoon Wang

“The Characteristics of Resilient Neighborhood Housing Markets During and After the U.S. Housing Crisis”

The Examiners Are:

Dr. Dan Immergluck (Chair)

Dr. Subhro Guhathakurta

Dr. Bruce Stiftel

Dr. Thomas “Danny” Boston

Dr. Jean-Michel Guldmann

Faculty and students are invited to attend this examination.

Abstract:

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, the resilience of housing markets has been of critical interest to academics and practitioners, who have raised the question of why some neighborhoods and regions are more affected by financial crises, while others are not. To answer this question, this study explores the determinants affecting the resilience of housing market at the neighborhood in the context of metropolitan housing markets during and after the recent United State housing crisis.

Most planning scholars interested in resilience have focused on the resilience of the labor market to economic shocks and the resilience of the housing market to natural disasters. However, few studies have examined resilience of the housing market to economic shocks. Given this research gap, the purpose of the study is to examine the impact of economic shocks on the resilience of housing market on various geographical scales (neighborhood and regional scales) from 2000 to 2014 in the United States. Based on the definitions and indicators of resilience of housing markets, metropolitan housing markets are categorized into four groups: resilient (bounce-back in a volatile housing market vs. stability in a robust housing market) and non-resilient housing markets (instability in a robust housing market vs. stagnation in a volatile housing market). Among four groups, stability in the robust housing market may provide us with the potentially desirable characteristics of resilient neighborhood housing markets. Furthermore, this study examines lower-income neighborhood experience in four groups of metropolitan housing markets to understand the trajectories of lower-income neighborhood resilience before, during, and after the United State housing crisis.

This study involves the multi-level modeling of neighborhood change that allows us to characterize the spatial and temporal nature of resilience as secular and cyclical changes occurring simultaneously, and regions and neighborhoods jointly affecting one another. If spatial autocorrelation is detected, an advanced approach will be used to integrate multilevel models and spatial regression models using eigenvector spatial filtering technique that controls for spatial dependency. The results of this study will help local and regional governments not only develop housing policies that promote more resilience in certain regions but also prevent a downturn of their communities during future economic recessions.