Principal Investigator(s):
Yingling Fan, Associate Dean for Faculty, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Co-Investigators:
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Noah Wexler, Ph.D. Student, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Project summary:
Highway improvement projects may positively affect nearby businesses, as better and safer roads induce increased travel and roadside business activities. However, highway improvements could also induce commercial gentrification--the process by which longstanding small businesses are displaced by newer small firms or chain businesses. This project aims to understand how trunk highway improvements in the Twin Cities metropolitan area affect the business composition of nearby and adjacent commercial corridors. Examining all of MnDOT's major highway improvements (equal to or in excess of $15 million), researchers will employ econometric tools such as matching and difference-in-differences analysis to analyze a 20-year panel dataset of businesses in the Twin Cities between 2000 and 2019. This project relies on methodology and data funded by the FY2020 Transitway Impacts Research Program (TIRP) project titled "Transitway Development and Commercial Gentrification." Researchers will synthesize the results from this project and the TIRP project to compare at both the neighborhood and corridor levels how the impacts of highway improvements on nearby businesses differ from those of transitway improvements. Additionally, to ensure a wide dissemination of the research results and inform the public about the differing impacts of highway and transitway improvements, researchers will visualize the predicted highway and transitway impacts on nearby businesses in an interactive online map. The map will also help to identify neighborhoods and corridors at high risk for commercial gentrification, i.e. areas with high concentrations of businesses likely to be negatively affected by nearby highway or transitway improvements (i.e. at-risk businesses).