Historic Preservation in Declining City Neighbourhoods: Analysing Rehabilitation Tax Credit Investments in Six U.S. Cities"

Historic preservation is common practice across the world, including in US cities. At the sametime, population decline, economic distress and vacancy prevalent in declining cities, also knownas legacy, shrinking or post-industrial cities, creates a pressing threat to a vast array of urban historic buildings. In the USA, recent planning and policy emphasises strategic demolition and/or targeting resources in potentially viable neighbourhoods, with little attention paid to historicpreservation. To fill this gap, we use a comparative case study of federal historic rehabilitation taxcredit (RTC) investments from 2000 to 2010 across the neighbourhoods of six legacy cities:Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Providence, Richmond and St. Louis. This is the first study touse disaggregated, longitudinal RTC data to analyse investment at the neighbourhood scale. Weuse the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index to evaluate investment concentration and US Census 2000data to characterise neighbourhoods where developers chose to undertake RTC projects. Thefindings show that RTC investments occurred across a wide range of places, including very lowand low-income neighbourhoods, and produced both market-rate and affordable housing acrosseach city’s neighbourhoods. The findings indicate that preservation occurs across a wide range oflegacy city neighbourhoods and inform urban planners and policymakers about locations wherethe private sector is willing to invest with favourable financing