“Political Protection of Privilege,” Jessica Trounstine, Vanderbilt University

AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP

Abstract: Race and class segregation in America dramatically affects individuals’ well-being throughout their life course. Prominent theories of the causes of segregation highlight preferences for same race neighbors and wealth stratification. I present evidence from an agent-based model to show that these individual-level theories require the segregation of housing types to produce residential segregation. Then, I draw on 40 years of Census data to show that the separation of multifamily housing from single-family housing underlays race and class segregation both within and across cities. I argue that land use regulation is a driver of these patterns. I use federal maps to identify privileged neighborhoods from the period before restrictive land use regulations were widely adopted. Using a novel dataset of more than 2 million parcels in the Bay Area of California, I find that neighborhoods that were privileged in the 1940s are much more likely to have restrictive zoning today. Finally, I show that these same privileged neighborhoods are also less likely to be densified over time. Land use regulations are political choices. These results provide evidence that privileged neighborhoods are protected by local policies, generating segregated communities.

Jessica Trounstine earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2004 and is the Centennial Chair and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. Previously, she served as the Foundation Board of Trustees Presidential Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced and as an Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Policy at Princeton University. She is the author of Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities (Cambridge University Press), winner of the Best Book in the Field from the Urban Affairs Association, the J. David Greenstone Prize, and the Best Book on Race, Ethnicity, and Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association. She is also the author of the award winning book, Political Monopolies in American Cities: The Rise and Fall of Bosses and Reformers (University of Chicago Press), along with dozens of articles and book chapters. She was selected as a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Trounstine’s work studies representation and inequality in American democracy using varied quantitative and qualitative methods. She consults for various governments and community organizations; and serves on numerous editorial and foundation boards.

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