Neighbourhoods are downstream of the economy

It is tempting to study neighbourhoods as a matter of cafés and facades. Those are the last things to show up. Before them come payrolls, interest rates, and whether a government actually builds the line it drew on a map.

When a factory, a university or a port expands, housing nearby is pulled along. When credit is cheap, more of that housing can be bought. When a rail station opens, time-to-work changes, and with it the set of people who can live there. These mechanisms explain occupancy. They do not time a purchase.

What GRIP watches

We look at whether a city’s economic base is one employer or many; whether infrastructure is funded or merely announced; whether households can service debt at ordinary rates, not just emergency ones.