{"id":2939,"date":"2013-07-24T07:47:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T13:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2939"},"modified":"2013-07-24T19:13:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T01:13:56","slug":"is-back-to-the-city-the-new-white-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2939","title":{"rendered":"Is “Back-To-The-City” the New “White Flight”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a great question, posed by Richey Piiparinen<\/a> in a post on his blog and re-posted to New Geography<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 The question is prompted by Thomas B. Fordham Institute data<\/a> showing that white folks are leading the human migration from suburbs back to the urban core.\u00a0 For example, the percentage of whites in Philadelphia\u2019s downtown zip code 19123 increased from 25% to 46% between 2000 and 2010.\u00a0 A similar trend has been documented for Washington DC (zip code 20001) and Brooklyn (zip codes 11205 and 11206).<\/p>\n

Piiparinen characterizes this\u00a0 \u201cwhite infill\u201d as an inversion of the 1960s movement of whites out of the urban core to the suburbs. \u00a0This time, however, the consequence for the core is not urban decay but gentrification.\u00a0 And for those non-white folks living in the core who are not displaced by gentrification there\u2019s very little evidence that rejuvenation is raising their economic boats.\u00a0 \u00a0The poverty rate in Washington DC\u2019s 20001 zip code<\/a>, for example, has stayed at a constant 28% between 1980 and today, and the child poverty rate of 45% is twice what it was in 1990.<\/p>\n

\"gentrification2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Piiparinen suggests that New Urbanists and other leading urban thinkers and \u201cplacemakers\u201d have failed to consider this situation or, perhaps more commonly, have simply taken race- and class-based segregation as inevitable.\u00a0 Alternatively, Piiparinen seeks a conversation about it.\u00a0 When will we start talking about \u201cequitable investment\u201d in urban cores?\u00a0 What might \u201creal economic restructuring\u201d capable of delivering social equity look like?\u00a0 Do we have the collective will to \u201cre-urbanize\u201d in ways that prioritize \u201chuman and community capital\u201d and create more opportunities for more people?<\/p>\n

A couple of days after Piiparinen\u2019s essay appeared in New Geography<\/em> there was a story in The Denver Post<\/i> about re-development \u00a0of the city\u2019s historically black Five Points<\/a> area. Clarkson Green<\/a> is the first build-out of the Five Points Redevelopment Plan<\/a>.\u00a0 This residential project advertises single family homes priced from $696,000 to $735,000.\u00a0 Townhomes will go for $475,000 to $525,000.\u00a0 The target demographic for these residences–in keeping with the trend in other cities–is almost certainly the white folks who\u2019ve been moving into the neighborhood. \u00a0According to Fordham Institute data the Five Points zip code of 80205 has one of the fastest gentrification rates in the country.\u00a0 Between 2000 and 2010 the white population share increased from 29.2% to 56.2%. \u00a0At the same time, the area\u2019s poverty rate in 2010 is estimated to have changed barely at all from the 31.5%<\/a> recorded in the 2000 census.\u00a0 Citi-data.com<\/a>\u00a0suggests that the Five Points poverty rate currently sits somewhere around 27.0%. \u00a0Various reports (e.g.,\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>) substantiate the accuracy of this estimate. Colorado’s child poverty rate<\/a>, like Washington D.C.’s, has also nearly doubled in the last ten years with Denver’s urban core leading the way (the child poverty rate for Five Points was 34% in 2000).<\/p>\n

\"ClarksonGreen.jpgs.small\"<\/a>

Clarkson Green Rendering<\/p><\/div>\n

Thus, Denver is experiencing the same kind of white infill as other cities, with the same pattern of socioeconomic effects and non-effects.\u00a0 Is this disparity on anyone\u2019s radar screen?\u00a0 Is there any more \u201ccollective will\u201d in Denver to do something about the perpetuating inequalities?\u00a0 Not really, if comments from Denver city councilman Albus Brooks<\/a> at the Clarkson Green groundbreaking<\/a> are any indication.\u00a0 After acknowledging the area\u2019s gentrification rate, Councilman Brooks avoids the implications.\u00a0 Instead, he gives a shout out to retailers that \u201cPeople are here, and they are ready to spend money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a great question, posed by Richey Piiparinen in a post on his blog and re-posted to New Geography.\u00a0 The question is prompted by Thomas B. Fordham Institute data showing that white folks are leading the human migration from suburbs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,8,16,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denver-urbanism","category-general","category-new-urbanism","category-placemaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Lp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2939"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2947,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions\/2947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}