Manhattan has gotten so white it’s ridiculous. I recall reading somewhere that the majority of children born in Manhattan are white for the first time in 40 years.
My job puts me into contact with people from all walks of life, and I regularly receive calls from black people who are leaving New York to move back to Virginia, North Carolina or wherever because it’s gotten too expensive to live here.
Well, clearly there are pros and cons. In general, the cities SHOULD be centers of wealth, culture, and commerce. The problem with the “white flight” is that it leaves the city a hollowed out core without a large enough tax base to provide basic services. I spent several weeks in New Haven, CT and it was a dump. Nothing but dive bars and an empty civic center full of thrift stores and boarded up stores and restaurants. People with money don’t live in Connecticut’s major cities. They all live in the suburbs.
Over the past 25 years, it’s become much more attractive to live in New York City. People old enough to remember talk about how parts of the city like Times Square and St Marks Place have “lost their character”. Sorry but I don’t consider a street full of prostitutes and drug dealers to have “character”. I have to work in Times Square and I would prefer to not have to worry about getting mugged between here and the Port Authority.
You can’t have it both ways though. If you make a neighborhood nicer, people who can afford to will move in and push the rents up.
Ultimately the question is whether a neighborhood is crappy because of the people who inhabit it or do those people live in a crappy neighborhood because no one else wants to live there?
Can you point me towards one? Because that sounds like a pretty sweet deal by New York standards. Last time I looked at places in Manhattan (about a year ago), studios and one bedrooms were going for $2000 - $2800.
The problem with living in Manhattan is that you will have to compete with lawyers and investment bankers and other people making in excess of $200,000 a year.
Okay, so whites moved to the suburbs - that was bad. Now whites are moving back to the city, that’s bad too. Where are they supposed to live? Are they supposed to be evenly dispersed? :rolleyes:
I don’t think statistics explain everything, though. In Chicago, anyway, the richer neighborhoods are largely white, and the poorer neighborhoods are largely black/Hispanic/other ethnic minority. Your point seems to be that statistically it’s to be expected that there will be a smaller number of blacks in an upper-middle-class neighborhood since there are a smaller number of blacks in the general populace, but by that logic it seems there should be a larger number of whites in poorer neighborhoods as well, since there are a larger number of whites in the general populace. Which is quite untrue. In Chicago, at any rate.
I hang out in what are probably considered gentrified areas of Chicago (Lakeview, Lincoln Square, Bucktown, Andersonville) and usually I will be the only person in the bar/restaurant/cafe that is not white (unless I am at a specifically ethnic place, like a Korean restaurant). If there are other minorities I can usually count them and not run out of fingers. (My white friends are usually surprised when I point this out.) I don’t know what that says about Chicago, though. Just my personal observations.
I wasn’t saying there was anything bad about it. I suppose I should not have used the word “ridiculous.” I think people should live wherever they can afford to buy a house or rent an apartment. If that means that Manhattan becomes all-white, then so be it.
That may well be, but other factors can come into play. I live fairly close to the boundary of white-flight. Once a subdivision or area becomes viewed as “black” or turning “black”, then realtors guide white clients to other places. I do not know reverse white flight, but it would not surprise me if realtors did not similarly guide clients to “white” areas.
Moving away from the race/class stuff – my recent city experiences are mainly New York, and this kind of rebuilding isn’t really happened. Yes, Home Depots et al are moving in on the fringes, but to my knowledge nobody is ripping down blocks to put in lawns and white picket fences – if anything, all the new construction I’ve noticed has been more vertical. But – having read my Jane Jacobs – I’d say that making city neighborhoods less dense and bringing in a lot of cars and parking lots is bad idea. It’s ruins the quality of life for everyone in the city. Whatever its attractions, I don’t think too many people look to LA as a model of urban planning.
I don’t know anything about stuff like this, but I have to wonder what the future of the urban working class is. Manhattan will still need thousands of people to (say) clean the office buildings and cook the food. So what happens when nobody in the bottom 25% income bracket can afford to live within reach of the subway system?
I realize that Queens and the Bronx are still a long way from being completely gentrified, but it does seem like that’s the way it’s creeping. (I think the South Bronx is already on its way.) (Although wen I checked my old Zip code in Harlem, low-income households are still a huge majority well after the gentrification of Harlem and Washignton Heights began.
So does the gentrification just never get to 100% – something always slows down the train? Or will the government just make it equally profitable for developers to build high-density, low-income housing on the outskirts? Will private bus services pick up the slack and drive the working clases to decaying old suburbs and smaller outlying cities, damn the commute time? Will wages for these jobs have to skyrocket when positions go unfilled?
I realize I’m not debating, I don’t have the tools or the information, I’m just wildly curious about this stuff.
Now that you mention it, I think that this happened to a degree with us. There was a property about a half mile east from where we ultimately bought which I saw a listing for which was quite a bit cheaper than what we had been looking at. When I mentioned it to our realtor, she advised me that I really wouldn’t be interested in that neighborhood. Funny enough, she was black and a lifelong resident of the City.
It is happening in New York City. In places like SoHo, East Village and Hells Kitchen, local coffee shops, speacility stores and delis are being replaced by Starbucks, Bananna Republics and Quiznos. An entire neighborhood block might be demolised to make way for a 40 story residential tower. Without proper planning what could happen is that you will go from a very walkable neighborhood to one totally populated by giant self sustained isolated towers.
Lifelong Chicagoan, just want to check in and express my opinion that the current situation in Chicago is far more widespread than simply Cabrini, and is unmatched in the few large cities I’ve visited over the past couple of decades.
There isn’t just a courtyard project replacing Cabrini. Look at the incredible construction of highrises in the south loop around the Museum campus, or the condo towers north of the loop (Streeterville?), of the new buildings west of the loop along Lake street. Over the past 20 years we saw the growth of the Dearborn Park neighborhood out of nothing, and the revitalization of the entire N side from Wicker Park and Ukranian Village up to Lakeview. There are now dorms, apartments, and condos smack dab in the loop, as well as stores and businesses springing up to service them. And a major part of the Olympics proposal involves bringing residential development to the Michael Reese site S of McCormick Place.
Many/most of these projects are a far cry from suburban living - and significantly exceed the population density of Chicago’s bungalow belt. Instead, there are many communal shared areas, and combined residential/commercial projects. Yes, there are some single family detached homes being built, but these are by far the minority and Chicago has always had a large number of SFD - as well as 2- and 3-flats, within shouting distance of downtown.
I fully acknowledge that folks who are dispossessed from gentrification need places to live. And when the projects come down, those folks will need to go somewhere. Among other things, this is a reason I consider reprehensible the city/state’s current unwillingness to adequately fund/expand pubic transportation. But I’m having a hard time viewing Chicago’s recent housing history as anything other than a tremendous success contributing towards the city remaining a vital place to live.
I wonder if any other large American city can claim anywhere near the number of housing starts in their central districts as Chicago over the past 2-3 decades?
Or qualify for prime lending rates.
White Flight and gentrification affect Washington DC like really fast glaciers. As an exasperated Black caller to a radio show put it, “Where do all these white people get half a million dollars for a one-bedroom condo?”
Life returns to our decaying, dying cities (a thing I did not believe would happen in my lifetime), & the SDMB bellyaches about it.
:smack:
Oh-my-achin’-bunions!
Poor whites tend to be out in true rural areas, past the suburbs. I’ve in-laws that are just as poor as any minority, project-dwelling city citizen but they’re way the heck out in the middle of nowhere. True rural areas are almost wholly white, at least in the north and west (in the south there are also black rural areas).
In sum, most of the poor whites don’t live in the cities - that why among city poor they are in the minority.
On the other hand, there are people who specifically seek out racially mixed areas in the city, for various reasons (perhaps a racially mixed couple, perhaps seeking a lower housing cost than an all-white neighborhood, social ethics, whatever…) Perhaps this does not occur in Atlanta, but it does occur in the Chicago area and, to a lesser extent, in the Detroit suburbs (and everyone who could got the hell out of Detroit itself decades ago)
By the way - what you describe, which is called “redlining”, is illegal. I realize it is still done, but it nonetheless against the law. Up in this area we just had several realtors go to jail for engaging in the practice.
Except the low-income housing in the project replacing Cabrini doesn’t come even close to replacing the number of units in the project it replaced. Yes, a few people have found spots there, but most have truly been displaced. The net effect is that there are fewer and fewer poor people in the city. Fewer and fewer middle class as well, especially in the central core. That “vitality” you describe is reserved only for those with the wealth to buy in - and for that you need to be more than middle class.
There are not a whole lot of racially mixed couples in Atlanta - at least not black/white. Actually, to be more accurate - there are not many in the 'burbs. Atlanta itself is more cosmopolitan and may have more mixed couples.
Read the Wiki article in **Hippy Hollow’s ** post. Some of the units, and I’ll grant you that there are far fewer than were available in the project itself, are price controlled so that at least some of the area residents are in fact able to afford the newer homes being built. It’s a controversial practice without a doubt but at least we’re trying something different.
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Sorry I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about posting.
Yes, as I said, a few people have found spots in the new development. Good for them.
Now - where do several thousand other families displaced by the tearing down the various projects go to live?
I don’t see this as a net gain for the city, even if a few people benefit.