Some American cities segregate, even as they diversify
Dartmouth Researchers Richard Wright, Steven R. Holloway, and Mark Ellis believe they have found evidence that suggests gentrification of black neighborhoods leads to a continuum of segregation in some cases.
The Atlantic Cities website reports Dartmouth Researchers Richard Wright, Steven R. Holloway, and Mark Ellis believe they have found evidence that suggests gentrification of black neighborhoods leads to a continuum of segregation in some cases. These researchers suggest their findings should strike a cautionary note amongst those who have hailed gentrification and the revitalization of black urban neighborhoods as a good thing.
What these demographic changes may in fact be doing is creating a more segregated class amongst the poorest minority groups, primarily black Americans who are often forced into other destitute areas with even fewer resources and less opportunity for advancement.
Data from the 2010 Census have offered up another benchmark for use in tracking the feel-good demographic story of America’s steady desegregation. Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor looked at the latest statistics earlier this year and went so far as to declare, in a widely circulated paper for the Manhattan Institute, that we have reached “THE END OF THE SEGREGATED CENTURY.”
Their best evidence is condensed in this chart, which tracks two common academic indices of segregation over the past 120 years (tracing the peak of segregation following the Great Migration of blacks out of the South into Northern cities, through its persistent decline over the last four decades):
In other words, many cities are seeing an increase in integrated neighborhoods and an increase in segregated ones at the same time.
Read the full story and view the chart here.
