Effects of neighbourhood demographic shifts on findings of environmental injustice: a New York City case-study

Summary We study the question of how changes in neighbourhood demographics affect findings of environmental equity. Many cross-sectional studies of association between neighbourhood racial and ethnic composition and the location of environmentally undesirable sites have been conducted. However, no evaluations have been conducted that examine how neighbourhood demographics change over time, and how those changes are related to the observed cross-sectional results. If the question is whether an observed association is the result of discrimination, it is crucial that the historical changes in neighbourhood structure are well understood. We develop some methods based on standard statistical techniques and illustrate their application by using the metropolitan New York City region as a case-study.