In recent years, a relatively small downtown population has done better, but surrounding areas have not. Philadelphia’s central core rebounded between 2000 and 2014, but for every district that gained in income, two suffered income declines.
Research by urban analysts Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi shows that the number of high-poverty (more than 30 percent below the poverty line) neighborhoods in the U.S. has tripled in the last half-century, from 1,100 in 1970 to 3,100 in 2010.
Poverty is not, as is widely suggested, now primarily a suburban problem. The poverty rate, according to the American Community Survey, remains two-thirds higher in urban cores than in suburbs.
Equally important, many longstanding middle- and working-class neighborhoods are disappearing. Teachers, firemen, and police officers are struggling to afford homes in many American cities, according to a study from Trulia. This pricing-out also applies to many skilled blue-collar professions like technicians, construction workers, and mechanics...
Some cities with the fastest gentrification rates, according to Realtor.com, have undergone dramatic displacement of their poor and minority populations. Washington, D.C., long celebrated as Chocolate City, has seen its African-American population share drop substantially. In Portland, 10,000 of the 38,000 residents of the historic African-American section, Albina, have been pushed elsewhere.
San Francisco has lost 7.2 percent of its black population since 2010. Given these realities, many grassroots groups have become skeptical, even openly hostile, to gentrification. Our colleagues working in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas have all reported growing opposition—including vandalism—to city development schemes widely seen as replacing long-term residents with short-timing hipsters...
Labels: Education, Highrise Development, Homelessness, Housing in the City, Portland, Seattle, Smart Growth
