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Abstract
The urban built environment develops over decades around fixed infrastructure. Los Angeles began its major growth at the dawn of the automobile era and became a low-density, dispersed metropolis organized around a vast freeway system. Since the 1990s, local governments have sought to restructure Los Angeles, shifting toward higher density, mixed-use housing and commercial development. A large investment in new rail transit lines is seen as critical to achieving these land use goals, mainly through promotion of transit-oriented development. In this article, we examine how employment patterns have changed around newly built Los Angeles rail stations. Results suggest that employment did not increase near stations immediately before or after station opening, but a few stations saw increased employment 5 to 10 years after opening.
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Introduction
For most of the 20th century, Los Angeles was the quintessential car-oriented city. Over the past 20 years, however, local and regional governments have invested significant resources in building rail transit infrastructure that connects major employment centers, including downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, and the eastern Wilshire Corridor. One goal of transit infrastructure is to catalyze high-density, mixed-use housing and commercial development within walking distance of rail stations, known as transit-oriented development (TOD). By increasing the accessibility of station areas, the building of new stations should increase surrounding land values, leading to higher-density development. In this article, we examine changes in employment patterns around Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (LA Metro) rail stations from 1990 to 2010. The analysis examines whether station areas have experienced changes in the density or composition of employment following station opening, and explores the time frame in which such changes may happen.
Standard urban economics models yield several hypotheses for how and why economic activity might change in areas where new rail stations are built. Following the standard monocentric city model, land values are highest at the central business district (CBD) and decline moving outward in proportion with increasing travel costs (Alonso, 1964; Brueckner, 1987; Mills, 1967; Muth, 1969). Building a rail station that connects the station's neighborhood with the CBD or employment subcenters should increase the accessibility of that neighborhood, thereby increasing land values and encouraging higher density development nearby (Anas, 1995; Glaeser and Kohlhase,...