Tag Archives: class

Gentrification and Displacement

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Joe Wolf

Miriam Zuk et al. have posted a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper, Gentrification, Displacement and The Role of Public Investment: A Literature Review. The paper opens,

The United States’ metropolitan areas’ ever-changing economies, demographics, and morphologies have fostered opportunity for some and hardship for others. These differential experiences “land” in place, and specifically in neighborhoods. Generally, three dynamic processes can be identified as important determinants of neighborhood change: movement of people, public policies and investments, and flows of private capital. These influences are by no means mutually exclusive – in fact they are very much mutually dependent – and they each are mediated by conceptions of race, class, place, and scale. How scholars approach the study of neighborhood change and the relative emphasis that they place on these three influences shapes the questions asked and attendant interventions proposed.

These catalysts result in a range of transformations – physical, demographic, political, economic – along upward, downward, or flat trajectories. In urban studies and policy, scholars have devoted volumes to analyzing neighborhood decline and subsequent revitalization at the hands of government, market, and individual interventions. One particular category of neighborhood change is gentrification, definitions and impacts of which have been debated for at least fifty years. Central to these debates is confronting and documenting the differential impacts on incumbent and new residents, and questions of who bears the burden and who reaps the benefits of changes. Few studies have addressed the role of public investment, and more specifically transit investment, in gentrification. Moreover, little has been written about how transit investment may spur neighborhood disinvestment and decline. Yet, at a time when so many U.S. regions are considering how best to accommodate future growth via public investment, developing a better understanding of its relationship with neighborhood change is critical to crafting more effective public policy.

This literature review will document the vast bodies of scholarship that have sought to examine these issues. First, we contextualize the concept and study of neighborhood change. Second, we delve into the literature on neighborhood decline and ascent (gentrification). The third section examines the role of public investment, specifically transit investment, on neighborhood change. Next, we examine the range of studies that have tried to define and measure one of gentrification’s most pronounced negative impacts: displacement. After describing the evolution of urban simulation models and their ability to incorporate racial and income transition, we conclude with an examination of gentrification and displacement assessment tools. (2, footnote omitted)

Because gentrification is such a contested topic both within and without the academy, this literature review is very useful. Notwithstanding the fact that the results of many of the studies mentioned are mixed, the authors were able to identify certain findings that emerge from the literature. These include,

  • Neighborhoods change slowly, but over time are becoming more segregated by income, due in part to macro-level increases in income inequality.
  • Racial segregation harms life chances and persists due to patterns of in-migration, “tipping points,” and other processes; however, racial integration is increasing, particularly in growing cities.
  • Despite severe data and analytic challenges in measuring the extent of displacement, most studies agree that gentrification at a minimum leads to exclusionary displacement and may push out some renters as well. (44-45)

As hot cities like New York and San Francisco struggle with their changing housing markets, policy makers should make decisions based on the best available research on gentrification and displacement. This literature review provides a guide.

Economic Segregation in NYC and the USA

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Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander have released Segregated City: The Geography of Economic Segregation in America’s Metros. The executive summary reads,

Americans have become increasingly sorted over the past couple of decades by income, education, and class. A large body of research has focused on the dual migrations of more affluent and skilled people and the less advantaged across the United States. Increasingly, Americans are sorting not just between cities and metro areas, but within them as well.
This study examines the geography of economic segregation in America. While most previous studies of economic segregation have generally focused on income, this report examines three dimensions of economic segregation: by income, education, and occupation. It develops individual and combined measures of income, educational, and occupational segregation, as well as an Overall Economic Segregation Index, and maps them across the more than 70,000 Census tracts that make up America’s 350-plus metros. In addition, it examines the key economic, social, and demographic factors that are associated with them. (8)
Although it reads like a jeremiad at times, there is a lot of thought-provoking information in this report. For instance, it examines “the segregation of the three major occupational classes—the creative class of knowledge workers, the even faster growing but lower-paid service class, and the declining blue-collar working class.” (36) It shows that there is a lot of segregation of these classes. This is unsurprising given the correlation between occupational class and income.
As a New Yorker, I immediately focused on the findings relevant to NYC. The report finds that the New York Metro area exhibits a high degree of economic segregation. This is not surprising, but it is interesting to learn where it stands vis a vis other large metro areas — it is sixth highest in the country.
I am not sure what the policy implications are of this report, but it does tell a tale of two cities in one place, one rich and one poor.

The Divided City — New York Edition

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Richard Florida and colleagues at the Martin Prosperity Institute have posted a report, The Divided City:  And the Shape of the New Metropolis. The executive summary explains that

To better understand the relationship between class and geography, this report charts the residential locations of the three major workforce classes: the knowledge-based creative class which makes up roughly a third of the U.S. workforce; the fast-growing service class of lower-skill, lower-wage occupations in food preparation, retail sales, personal services, and clerical and administrative work that makes up slightly more than 45 percent of the workforce; and the once-dominant but now dwindling blue-collar working class of factory, construction, and transportation workers who make up roughly 20 percent of the workforce.

 The study tracks their residential locations by Census tract, areas that are smaller than many neighborhoods, based on data from the 2010 American Community Survey. The study covers 12 of America’s largest metro areas and their center cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Detroit. It examines these patterns of class division in light of the classic models of urban form developed in the first half of the 20th century. These models suggest an outward-oriented model of urban growth and development with industry and commerce at the center of the city surrounded by lower-income working class housing, with more affluent groups located in less dense areas further out at the periphery. It also considers these patterns in light of more recent theories of a back-to-the-city movement and of a so-called “Great Inversion,” in which an increasingly advantaged core is surrounded by less advantaged suburbs.

 The study finds a clear and striking pattern of class division across each and every city and metro area with the affluent creative class occupying the most economically functional and desirable locations. Although the pattern is expressed differently, each city and metro area in our analysis has evident clusters of the creative class in and around the urban core. While this pattern is most pronounced in post-industrial metros like San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, and New York, a similar but less developed pattern can be discerned in every metro area we covered, including older industrial metros like Detroit, sprawling Sunbelt metros like Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas, and service-driven economies like Miami. In some metros, these class-based clusters embrace large spans of territory. In others, the pattern is more fractured, fragmented, or tessellated.

 The locations of the other two classes are structured and shaped by the locational prerogatives of the creative class. The service class either surrounds the creative class, being concentrated in areas of urban disadvantage, or pushed far off into the suburban fringe. There are strikingly few working class concentrations left in America’s major cities and metros. (iv)

As a New Yorker, I was particularly struck by the map of New York City on page 12. It is striking to see how few blue-collar communities are left in the City and how starkly divided the rest of the City is between the “creative” and “service” classes. This is not particularly surprising, but striking nonetheless.