Read on Twitter
1) A thread and new blog post about the Great Disconnect, in terms of urban needs, between the nation's elite, mainly coastal, cities; and many of the cities located within its vast interior. https://thestile1972.tumblr.com/post/189234807525/the-great-disconnect
2) Despite never-ending media narratives that start with the phrase "Today cities are. . ." (which go on to only describe what is happening in the same dozen-or-so cities), it is increasingly obvious that more and more cities are falling behind economically.
3) I've written a lot about the discussion around gentrification. I really don't like doing it, but I will continue to do so, because not enough people are saying those things. And I'm going to keep saying them, because they need to be said.
4) A lot of the early pieces about gentrification aired thoughtful, reasonable, and understandable concerns about displacement and inequality in a handful of coastal cities. There are places where poor people are being displaced by wealthier people. And the concerns are real.
5) But increasingly, the writing about gentrification has turned into intellectual dishonesty, irrational hysteria, and even self-parody - particularly when it is applied to the long-suffering cities of the Rust Belt.
6) Take Peter Moskowitz's "How to Kill a City" - which Josh Stephens accurately calls "an ideological rant in the guise of journalism".
http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/20170529
http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/20170529
7) Moskowitz makes clear that no matter how many times he mentions Detroit, it is clear that he doesn't understand the place.
He says "The new Detroit is now nearly a closed-loop. It is possible to live in this new Detroit and never set foot in the old one."
He says "The new Detroit is now nearly a closed-loop. It is possible to live in this new Detroit and never set foot in the old one."
8) I've got news for him. Detroit has been like that for 50 years. It's just that the closed-loop was called "Eight Mile Road", a virtual Berlin Wall separating the overwhelmingly black, overwhelmingly poor city of Detroit from its northern suburbs.
9) Now, for the first time in living memory cc: @petesaunders3 some small amount of investment and population is trickling back into (too few) places in Detroit proper. Is this transition without its own unique challenges or concerns? Absolutely not.
10) But for those of us who live in cities like Detroit, where even so much as one new house being built (or, hell, sometime just a vacant one that has moldered away for years being torn down) it's really hard to understand the ranting and raving about the inequality.
11) The inequality and the racial segregation were already there long before the first yoga studio or Whole Foods opened in Midtown or Downtown Detroit. It's just that it was inequality between Oakland & Macomb counties and Detroit proper.
12) So, it's hard to get too worked up about someone with some dollars in their pocket (for the first time in most of our lifetimes) - possibly, maybe, perhaps - deciding to invest them in the urban core, rather than in the endless suburbs that used to be forests and cornfields.
13) A recent New York Times piece on climate change warned us that although long-suffering Duluth, Minnesota may benefit in the future from "climate refugees", new growth raises the specter of (you guessed it) - GENTRIFICATION. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/climate/climate-migration-duluth.html
14) Then there's Samuel Stein's "Capital City", which at least gets points for originality by dispensing with blaming hipsters and developers for gentrification, and aims its sights squarely on my overwhelmingly leftward-leaning profession of urban planning.
15) Stein even goes so far as to say that “proto-planners” (whatever that means) were responsible for Native American genocide as they “enabled the country’s murderous westward expansion, and mapped the rail networks and other infrastructure that made it possible.“
16) There is even a movement (originating in UC Berkeley) called “Just Green Enough”, which is premised on the idea that parks in poor neighborhoods shouldn’t be made “too nice” in order to prevent displacement by gentrification.
17) Precious energy and effort is expended on endless worry and discussion (and in some cases, active opposition) to a nice park, a new ice cream shop, or a new grocery store, because it could theoretically, potentially displace someone.
18) Meanwhile, the poor themselves, continue to languish in disinvested and actively-avoided neighborhoods, without any of the amenities or conveniences that the activists and academics have (and take for granted) in their own neighborhoods.
19) However well-intentioned, these efforts end up doing the same thing - ensuring that people living in poor neighborhoods continue to have the worst of everything, confined to separate and unequal places with substandard facilities and amenities, all “for their own good”.
20) For those interested in separating data-driven fact from ideologically-driven fiction, a new report provides a welcome corrective. https://www.law.umn.edu/institute-metropolitan-opportunity/gentrification
21) It finds that the most common form of American neighborhood change, by far, is poverty concentration, rather than wealth concentration. Low-income residents are exposed to neighborhood decline far more than gentrification.
22) In fact, there was no metropolitan area in the nation where a low-income person was more likely to live in an economically expanding neighborhood than in an economically declining neighborhood.
23) And, if you're curious, Detroit ranked 50 (out of the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas) in terms of the rate at which poverty is concentrating, and in the overall level of abandonment. The metro that I live in (Cleveland-Akron) ranked 49.
24) I see a lot of people, even here in the Rust Belt, who are energized about gentrification, and convinced that it is the enemy. It’s considered a sexy topic for activism.
25) But I don’t see the same level of passionate activism being applied to fighting the spread of concentrated urban poverty, neighborhood abandonment, or the yawning racial and economic chasm between older cities like Akron, Cleveland, Detroit, and their newer suburbs.
26) And let’s be honest. Those are big, messy, complicated, systemic, extremely intractable problems, and there is nothing sexy about them. They don’t lend themselves to snarky tweets, clever yard sign slogans, or quick-take podcasts.
27) Most people would rather not think about them, because there is not a lot that the average person can even do about them.
But they are the urban problems we need to face. They are the existential challenges to our cities and to the vulnerable people who live in them
But they are the urban problems we need to face. They are the existential challenges to our cities and to the vulnerable people who live in them
28) New development does not always mean displacement, and revitalization is not always a synonym for gentrification.
29) Gentrification has become a useless word. Words lose their value whey they no longer have an agreed-upon meaning. No one knows what the hell that word means anymore. It’s time to retire it.
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30) [resume] Some more context on the Great Divide in urban neighborhoods between the few (mainly coastal) cities that are centers of prestige, power, and wealth; and the many which are not.
This time, we're talking about concentration of poverty.
This time, we're talking about concentration of poverty.
31) Concentration of poverty, in many ways, is more damaging to people than poverty itself.
Being poor *and* living in a poor neighborhood is limiting and injurious to people in ways that simply being poor is not.
It's another big reason why place-based thinking still matters.
Being poor *and* living in a poor neighborhood is limiting and injurious to people in ways that simply being poor is not.
It's another big reason why place-based thinking still matters.
32) If you've never read Paul Jargowsky's "Architecture of Segregation - Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy", please do. https://tcf.org/content/report/architecture-of-segregation/?agreed=1
33) Among the many important points made in this report, the most important one for our purposes here, is the fact that areas of concentrated urban poverty have greatly increased since 2000.
34) This finding is important because it runs counter to the media-driven narrative of the past decade which says that cities are becoming the playgrounds of the rich, and that displacement of the poor is the most significant problem that they are facing.
35) Now, it's true that the two things could go hand-in-hand: that is, having more affluent people in cities could displace people who are poor, and that could lead to greater concentration of poverty.
36) But that's largely not what is going on. The cities where poverty is concentrating the fastest are not the ones that are "gentrifying". In most cases, they are the ones that are "gentrifying" the least.
37) This is America - sadly, there is a high likelihood that affluent and poor people are going to live far apart from one another. In the metro areas where poverty is concentrating the fastest, there are large exclusive areas where the poor do not live - the suburbs.
38) Yes, some inner suburban areas in larger metros are getting poorer. Even so, the divide between the affluent and the poor is still overwhelmingly an urban/suburban one - particularly in the areas of nation's midsection, where concentrated poverty is the highest.
39) You don't hear much about any of this in the big media, or on urbanist Twitter, because the big media and urbanist Twitter is concentrated in the cities where poverty is not as concentrated, and where affluent people *do* live in the urban core in large numbers.
40) I've seen more than a few suburbanites where I live begin to wring their hands with worry about "gentrification" and exclusion of the poor from urban neighborhoods, when *they* are the ones who live in segregated communities with zoning that doesn't even allow apartments.
41) So a lot of mid-sized cities in the mid-section of the country, where concentrated poverty is most profound, end up getting it from both ends.
People in larger, more prosperous cities don't understand what it's like here; neither do our next-door neighbors in our suburbs.
People in larger, more prosperous cities don't understand what it's like here; neither do our next-door neighbors in our suburbs.
42) Back to Jargowsky's report. Some of its key findings are:
-There was a dramatic increase in high-poverty neighborhoods since 2000
-13.8 million people lived in them in 2015, as opposed to 7.2 million in 2000
-Poverty was concentrating well prior to the Great Recession.
-There was a dramatic increase in high-poverty neighborhoods since 2000
-13.8 million people lived in them in 2015, as opposed to 7.2 million in 2000
-Poverty was concentrating well prior to the Great Recession.
43) More Jargowsky:
-1 in 4 poor black people live in these neighborhoods
-1 in 13 poor white people live in these neighborhoods
-Fastest concentration of black poverty was in metros with 500k to 1M people
-1 in 4 poor black people live in these neighborhoods
-1 in 13 poor white people live in these neighborhoods
-Fastest concentration of black poverty was in metros with 500k to 1M people
44) It's important to understand the difference between poverty and concentrated poverty.
Say 20 out of every 100 people are poor. Where those 20 people live makes a big difference.
Say 20 out of every 100 people are poor. Where those 20 people live makes a big difference.
45) Perhaps there is a poor household living in every 5th house, throughout the entirety of the metro area.
That's perfectly unconcentrated poverty (and it never comes close to happening in any metro area).
That's perfectly unconcentrated poverty (and it never comes close to happening in any metro area).
46) Or, conversely, perhaps in 95% of the neighborhoods no one is poor, and in the remaining 5% of the neighborhoods, everyone is poor.
That's perfectly concentrated poverty (and it's much closer to the reality in many metro areas).
That's perfectly concentrated poverty (and it's much closer to the reality in many metro areas).
47) It's still the same 20% of the population that is poor. But where they live makes all of the difference in the world, in terms of social and economic outcomes - particularly for children.
48) Poverty is concentrating in mid-sized cities in midsection of the country, faster than it is elsewhere - particularly for black residents.
1 in 4 poor black people live in a neighborhood that is 40%+ poor.
1 in 13 poor white people live in a neighborhood that 40%+ poor.
1 in 4 poor black people live in a neighborhood that is 40%+ poor.
1 in 13 poor white people live in a neighborhood that 40%+ poor.
49) Detroit is a case-study. At the same time many media stories on Detroit were about gentrification, craft beer, and yoga studios Downtown, poverty was concentrating in Detroit faster than ever. It should go without saying, but the suburbs have always been full of yoga studios.
50) In Detroit, the number of high-poverty (40%+) census tracts increased from 51 to 184 between 2000 and 2013. The story was similar in Cleveland, Syracuse, and many other mid-to-larger cities around the Great Lakes.
51) Of all the regions in the country, the Midwest was hit the hardest of all, in terms of the growing concentration of poverty:
Change in concentration of poverty since 2000:
Northeast (2.5%)
Midwest (7.8%)
South (3.7%)
West (3.2%)
Change in concentration of poverty since 2000:
Northeast (2.5%)
Midwest (7.8%)
South (3.7%)
West (3.2%)
52) And black people in the Midwest were hit hardest of all:
Change in concentration of black poverty since 2000:
Northeast (2.4%)
Midwest (16.3%)
South (5.1%)
West (0.9%)
Change in concentration of black poverty since 2000:
Northeast (2.4%)
Midwest (16.3%)
South (5.1%)
West (0.9%)
53) And mid-sized cities, in general, were also hit hardest of all:
"Since 2000, concentration of poverty in the thirteen metropolitan areas with more than 3 million persons grew by less than two percentage points overall and by only half a percentage point among blacks."
"Since 2000, concentration of poverty in the thirteen metropolitan areas with more than 3 million persons grew by less than two percentage points overall and by only half a percentage point among blacks."
54) "Whereas concentration of poverty used to be a big city problem, the fastest growth in black concentration of poverty..since 2000 was in metropolitan areas with 500,000 to 1 million persons—places like Syracuse, NY; Dayton, OH; Gary, IN; and Wilmington, DE."
55) Contra the big media narrative, where everything that isn't NYC or SF is a "small town" or "rural", it's the forgotten mid-sized cities (Akron, Dayton, Toledo, Rochester, Flint, Youngstown, Canton) that have seen poverty concentrate the fastest.
These are urban places.
These are urban places.
56) Mid-sized and/or Midwestern cities rank near the top in concentration of black poverty. In Syracuse, 65% of poor black people live in a neighborhood with a poverty rate of 40+%
57) The Great Divide:
"Not all metros had increases in black concentration of poverty. Notable declines in concentration of black poverty..include..media centers of New York (–5.6 percentage points), Los Angeles (–2.5), and Atlanta (–3.1), as well as Washington, D.C. (–1.1).
"Not all metros had increases in black concentration of poverty. Notable declines in concentration of black poverty..include..media centers of New York (–5.6 percentage points), Los Angeles (–2.5), and Atlanta (–3.1), as well as Washington, D.C. (–1.1).
58) Mid-sized and/or Midwestern cities also rank near the top in concentration of white poverty. In Detroit, 33% of poor white people live in a neighborhood with a poverty rate of 40+%
59) Metros like McAllen, TX and New York are anomalies, because they have very small percentages of non-Hispanic white people (McAllen) or very small percentages of poor white people (New York). The few poor white people who exist in those places are concentrated in few areas.
60) Conversely, many Midwestern metros have a lot of poor white people, and they, too, are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer neighborhoods. As stated earlier, Detroit ranked second in terms of concentration of white poverty.
