"Don't Destroy Our Neighborhood": Neighborhood Imaginaries and the Politics of Upzoning / Displacement through Development: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Residential Eviction and Capital Investment

Abstract

These papers examine different facets of urban land use change in the Seattle region, exploring both the causes and consequences of specific development patterns. The first paper utilizes Natural Language Processing techniques on public comment data to reveal patterns of support and opposition toward residential densification across different neighborhoods in Seattle. It finds that opposition to land use reform was often conveyed through narratives of neighborhood preservation in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods, while comments from other neighborhoods were generally more supportive and focused more on issues of affordability and equity. The second paper examines the relationship between building permit activity and residential evictions in Seattle and Tacoma, pointing to a robust pattern in which evictions immediately precede demolition and remodeling activity. Additionally, permit activity in the surrounding neighborhood is associated with an increased risk of eviction, pointing to the role of broader neighborhood change in patterns of residential displacement.