Homer Hoyt

Homer Hoyt (1895-1984) was an economist who worked in real estate and created the sector model for urban land use.

Hoyt studied at the University of Chicago, where received his J.D and Ph. D in 1918 and 1933 respectively. He worked as a real estate broker and consultant in Chicago in 1925 and then joined the Federal Housing Administration in 1934 as a principal housing economist until 1940. In 1944, he stared working as a visiting professor of land economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University.

As a consultant for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Homer offered his view that land values and the racial composition of a neighborhood were closely linked (Judd & Swanstrom, 2006):

:"If the entrance of a colored family into a white neighborhood causes a general exodus of the white people it is reflected in property values. Except in the case of Negroes and Mexicans, however, these racial and national barriers disappear when the individuals of the foreign nationality groups rise in the economic scale or conform to the American standards of living...While the ranking may be scientifically wrong from the standpoint of inherent racial characteristics, it registers an opinion or prejudice that is reflected in land values; it is the ranking of race and nationalities with respect to their beneficial effect upon land values. Those having the most favorable effect come first in the list and those exerting the most detrimental effect appear last:

:# English, Germans, Scots, Irish, Scandinavians:# North Italians:# Bohemians or Czechoslovakians:# Poles:# Lithuanians:# Greeks:# Russian Jews of lower class:# South Italians:# Negroes:# Mexicans"

Selected publications

* "According to Hoyt" ; fifty years of Homer Hoyt / Articles on law, real estate cycle, economic base, sector theory, shopping centers, urban growth, 1916-1966. [Washington, D.C., 1966]
* "Growth of original residential settlement in Chicago" ; Types of planning areas in Chicago, 1956. Washington, D.C. : Homer Hoyt Associates, 1956.
*"One hundred years of land values in Chicago" / Homer Hoyt. New York : Arno Press, 1970, [c1933]
*"City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America": Dennis R. Judd & Todd Swanstrom; Pearson Longman, 2006. pp.154

External links

* [http://www.hoyt.org/] Non-profit research and educational foundation