The Wall Street Journal recently printed an article about the End of White Flight based on the small increases of whites returning to cities and the fairly significant decreases of blacks in cities moving to the suburbs. The article covers the many challenges cities have to face with a changing population such as changing social norms, loss of heritage, conflict in cultural traditions and the redistricting of school students. Other challenges that cities face is the rising rate of poverty among the city's poor neighborhoods as the black middle class moves and take jobs to the suburbs and affluent whites come to other impoverished neighborhood and price the poor out.
The End of White Flight will continue to have major impacts on how cities are viewed and planned as the shift of whites moving toward cities and blacks moving to the suburbs will significantly change the spatial dynamics of cities. Old cultural traditions will end and be furiously fought for and new ones will arise in unfamiliar places.
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3 comments:
The were having a discussion on this topic on NPR monday.
It was an perspective on the matter. More interesting where the call in comments by the listeners.
I too have noticed how things are changing in and around the many suburbs. It used to be whereas the whites would move as the blacks moved in. Now the whites are renovating and moving in which forces the blacks out.
America.
"Gentrification" is defined as social upgrading of an area. Social upgrading typically is regarded as an increase in the amount of affluence and/or educated persons in a particular neighborhood. As our notions of regional cultural dynamics shift from what we once thought, so too will the definition of gentrification. In fact it already has...gentrification has become a term synonymous with displacement as well as reinvestment. As markets continue to tighten, especially in densely populated metro areas like Baltimore, the ability to 'flee' the ills (actual or perceived) of the urban environs will run short. New cultures and neighborhood dynamics will have to be accepted as part of 'social upgrading' in order for gentrification to have a positive affect on neighborhoods.
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