Residential Segregation at Physical Neighborhood Boundaries

Train tracks delineate neighborhoods and serve as landmarks in the urban landscape. This paper sheds light on historic railroad placement as a predictor of contemporary segregation, using a digitized map of Texas railroads circa 1911 to compare Census block groups separated by train tracks today. Using a boundary discontinuity design, I document an unconditional house price premium of 17% to live on the high-income side of the tracks. Given that local price differences reflect the valuation of amenity differences, I show that train tracks cause race and income segregation, independent of settings where planners use them to draw administrative boundaries. In the case of schools, I find that elementary students zoned to the same school can live in remarkably different neighborhood environments.