Suburbs Losing Young Whites To Cities, Brookings Institution Finds, at the Huffington Post.
WASHINGTON - White flight? In a reversal, America's suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population as many younger, educated whites move to cities for jobs and shorter commutes.
Monday, May 10, 2010
"What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into 'bright flight' to cities ... "
Another link swiped from Bluegill, in the absence of time to come up with anything original.
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14 comments:
"Stealing" from Jeff shows that you are a wise man.
What I find interesting about most studies and comments about movement trends is the question of why it is occurring. Most of the time it is accompanied with someone trying to sale the idea of living in the city and not in the suburbs.
The trend has more to do with cost than anything. Some 40 to 30 years ago cost of land in the suburbs and rural areas was cheaper than land in the city. Now land and housing in those suburban areas are the most expensive areas for home owners.
Home buyers of all types are finding that urban neighborhoods are more affordable and therefore the main, but not the only, reason for the trend.
"A new image of urban America is in the making," said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings who co-wrote the report. "What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into 'bright flight' to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambiance as an attraction."
That is the important point of the article and comports with Richard Florida's research over the last 10 years.
Florida's new book, The Great Reset, has just come out. Plan to get a copy or two at Destinations this week.
Just as white flight to the suburbs was subsidized by the building of streetcar lines, interstate highways, and federal home loans, this new trend has also been systematically manufactured by sub-prime lending, HOPE VI, and the destruction of public housing, all of which amounts to a form of economic cleansing.
Just as urban renewal came to be known as "negro removal," new urbanism has resulted in displacement, gentrification, and seems to desire cities without poor people (or recreating the suburbs downtown). Just as red-lining, steering, restrictive covenants, and exclusionary zoning fostered segregation and concentrations of poverty, so will the new trend. Only now US cities will look much more like European cities, where the poor are isolated on the periphery instead of the center.
Josh's point is an important one.
Also from the study:
"The size of the middle class (households earning between 80 and 150 percent of median income) dropped almost 30 percent between 1999 and 2008."
There necessarily has to be a lot more involved in restructuring for equity and sustainability than just location swaps. We're just now seeing some potential for recovering from the Reagan years, let alone 50s era policy.
Josh, in your studies have you come across strategies showing any success at promoting stable, mixed income neighborhoods or otherwise mitigating the negatives of New Urbanism?
There are tons of good examples, especially in Portland and Seattle. Inclusionary zoning has been successful, which the UK adopted 20 years ago. Also, maintaining that a certain percentage of units remain affordable or low income in a redevelopment effort helps maintain economic diversity.
Mixed-income neighborhoods tend to happen organically without promotion so long as there is no public or private effort discouraging it. Often there is a definite strategy toward displacement on the part of private developers in order to make the neighborhood "marketable."
Zoning is a perpetual impediment b/c it was designed to separate land use. We are now seeing it being used to "zone-out" certain social services and uses that cater to the poor. For instance, in the 1920s, San Francisco realized that they could not legally bar Chinese immigrants from the city. So they used zoning to limit laundry services, which Chinese families tended to operate. Many cities are switching from zoning to a more form-based approach, which is encouraging.
The real battle has more to do with fear-based attitudes and prejudices, however. Once people realize that diversity in all forms is beneficial and that low-income housing does not negatively impact property values so long as it is designed well, maintained, and not clustered, they will become more open to mixed income neighborhoods.
The New Urbanist Charter is a brilliant document. It is a shame that private developers who have taken on New Urbanism as a banner have failed so miserably to live up to it.
Brandon's quote from William Frey makes my point.
"What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into 'bright flight' to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambiance as an attraction."
It sounds like a sales pitch.
I didn't quote that in response to your comment.
Your points were 1) comments about movement trends are accompanied by sales pitches for living in the city; and 2) that affordability is the driving force behind where people choose to live.
Respectfully, I don't read the quote as a sales pitch, but the summary of study findings, and the major point of the article, which is reflected in the quote, is apparently evidence against your second point as it pertains to young educated adults.
Nowhere is it written that "healthy" neighborhood equals "gentrified," "white," or "rich" neighborhood. Convincing counterexamples exists; a neighborhood can be both healthy and economically & culturally diverse. The trick is how to get there. It doesn't happen by chance.
I just returned from a long weekend in downtown Chicago. The many new housing developments attest that Chicago's downtown is booming. But the prices of the new condos indicate that it's mainly people with six figure incomes moving in. That type of development is great if you're young, rich and want an exciting place to live. It's great if you want a revived downtown. It isnot great if your goal is to solve any social problems. It merely moves problems from one neighborhood to another.
As to RemCha's argument that affordability is the driver, Chicago is the counterexample, at least if you're looking solely at the price to buy a house. While housing in downtown New Albany is cheap, downtown Chicago housing is not. Prices in downtown Chicago are several times above what one would find 15 miles out. Yet people are moving there. People are willing to pay a large premium for the increased quality of life that comes with downtown living. The lesson to be learned from Chicago is that it's not the price of the house that determines where people will move.
Why "bright flight?" Many young people described suburbs as "boring." They want transitional streetscapes and unique architecture. One generation earlier, many people who lived in suburbs avoided inner cities for fear of crime and poverty. Now that more people have moved to downtown, as more suburban types see unique lofts, etc. HGTV, the more the city = crime stereotype is busted.
Also, new suburban development is increasingly far from the city center. Each new subdivision is even further from jobs, shopping and restaurants. At some point, people are going to decide they don't want to spend as much time in their cars.
Furthermore, the rate of suburban expansion is closely related to the cost of transportation. While buying a Chicago house is not cheap, the house purchase expenditure can relieve the homeowners of the need for an additional automobile. When you do drive, you don't drive as far. The more available public transportation is, the more price incentive people have to live near public transportation, i.e., in town. The higher gas prices run (and they will go back up when the recession ends), the more price incentive people have to live close to others.
While metro Louisville does not have the longest commute times when measured in time, Louisville does have one of the nation's top two or three average commutes when measured by distance. That makes our metro area especially vulnerable to increased gas prices.
A three or four month gas price hike just causes people to whine. A three or four year gas hike causes people to change their lifestyles. Higher oil prices and/or higher gas taxes will, in the long run, cause people to move closer in.
I agree with the Chicago model. My family spent a few weeks studying Chicago architecture last summer and the article from the Huffington Post describes what is happening there.
What I said was a broad overstatement and I intended it to be. When you brake down what Mr. Frey and the Huffington Post is saying it is also a broad over statement. It is a model that doesn't apply to most cities. Louisville is a perfect example and a city that I see similarities in all the cities I have been to. When you do find new urban development it has a lot to do with the fact that property is affordable for developers to make those investments. This was not true 40 years ago. And a few decades after investment CBDs are once again becoming very expensive places.
I have never been to Los Angles but New York is even a different model altogether. Houston is very similar to Louisville in it growth patterns and cities from that point on follow that pattern, with a few exceptions.
You are right, Dan, transportation costs have been as determinant as land costs in urban migratory patterns, in some cases, much more so. This has been true for over 100 years. To illustrate, here is a quote from the Kenneth Jackson book, Crabgrass Frontier:
In the period between 1888 and 1918, when the automobile was still a novelty and a toy, the electric streetcar represented a revolutionary advance in transportation technology. Radiating outward from the central business districts, the tracks opened up a vast suburban ring and enabled electric trains to travel as fast as fourteen miles per hour, or four times faster than the horse-drawn systems they replaced. By the turn of the century, a "new city," segregated by class and economic function and encompassing an area triple the territory of the older walking city, had clearly emerged as the center of the American urban society. The electric streetcar was the key to the shift. So important and pervasive had the trolley become by 1904 that its inventor Frank Sprague could reasonably claim, "The electric railway has become the most potent factor in our modern life."
Here's a take from Harvard Business Review. Even discusses link between suburban sprawl and obesity.
http://hbr.org/2010/05/back-to-the-city/ar/1
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