A Planner's reality: Segregation in America

Salon.com recently posted a great slideshow of the most segregated cities in America. The post had a map of the racial breakdown of each city as well as an explanation of the history of segregation in each city. Check out the slideshow in this link.

What's interesting is that even in some of the most segregated cities, there is a new trend of young affluent white suburbanites moving into back into the core of cities and working class and middle class city black populations moving into inner-rung suburbs. While this new trend is causing some existing places to become more diverse as one population slides into a new neighborhood as the group is leaving, what's fascinating is that the new trend is still reinforcing the old trend of segregation. The shifts in population among races are not quite coexisting with each other as they are displacing one another.

And this displacement is causing a lot of ugly fights between new and existing populations throughout urban America. In Philadelphia and Washington D.C., historically black neighborhoods are trying to protect their community's identity from white and now black gentrifiers and in suburban Detroit, elite black suburbs or worried about the waves of working class blacks from inner-city Detroit moving into their communities.

These new tensions are now issues that planners now have to listen to and address. These tensions are no longer just a sensitive issue for the inner-city but now affect suburban planners as well. In my jurisdiction, my office worked on an historic black community (historic in culture but not in the building preservation sense) that began as a segregated community and had faced decades of discrimination. Their struggles in overcoming these obstacles helped cement the community's identity and it was very important that we preserve and honor that community's history. But from a strictly planning sense, none of their history of segregation was going to greatly affect how we planned and designed their future housing developments and open spaces. We could not ignore their history but we could not plan around their history either without a historical landmark or building. There was a disconnect between the community and the planners. To the community, their history was the number one concern. For the planners, designing safe spaces was our number one concern.

This disconnect between preserving the people's history in a community over the preservation of buildings is one of city planning's biggest challenges and up to now one of it's biggest failures. As a whole, city planners do not know how to at least help a community on the wrong side of gentrification. As city planners we almost always side with the gentrifiers because our number one goal is to create better designed spaces and buildings. The influx of gentrification helps remove and redevelop empty debris filled lots, rehabilitates vacant buildings and brings commercial vitality back into neighborhoods. Who wouldn't want that?

Newcomers into gentrified inner-city neighborhoods are often dismayed when they find out that it is the existing long term residents who do not want the positive changes of gentrification. The standard answer for newcomers to existing long-term residents is that they should be thanking them for improving their neighborhoods. The issue for long-term residents is not that they want to live in sub-standard conditions but they are seeking a permanent stake in their community in which they felt they established. Whether that neighborhood is an affluent community or a poor community, long term residents feel that it is their neighborhood in large part because of the history of segregation. A lot of older black inner-city neighborhoods were purposefully segregated and became the only neighborhoods blacks could live in within a metropolitan region.

Despite their struggles these older black communities formed identities that were important not only to the psyche of blacks that lived in that community but to urban black America as a whole...for that time. Over time, these communities have often lost their identities as segregation slowly ended and middle class blacks moved out, leaving some of the working class blacks who couldn't afford to leave feel abandoned. But even with all that said there is still some high reverence for some of these communities no matter how poverty stricken or crime riddled they have become. While saying you are from Harlem or the Southside of Chicago or the 9th Ward of New Orleans may be looked down upon by some, for some in urban black America it is still a source of pride.

And this source of pride, which is wrapped around decades of segregation, self-empowerment, decline and then decades of poverty is what gentrification threatens to end. These communities have seen the life cycles of the black community within those cities and while they may be dying, those that still live in those communities do not want to see it end. So how do we as planners preserve that sense of pride? We all know that cities and neighborhoods go through changes, death and rebirth. Do we interfere with the natural life cycle of neighborhoods? Or is it important to maintain the cultural identity of a place like Harlem from becoming just another nice gentrified neighborhood?

What are your thoughts? Thanks for reading!

New York - City & Country

Time Lapse World War II Photos

For more pictures check out this blog.

Seattle's Central District

This is a video made for a research project about the Central District of Seattle based on the music video and lyrics for "Home" by Jake One featuri...

This video was made solely for educational purposes with all sources properly cited and given credit.

HAITI 1942

Looking Into the Past

Market Street, Leesberg, Virgnia

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Loudoun Street, Leesberg, Virginia

King & Martket Streets, Leesberg, Virgina

Union Station Square, Washington DC

Ellicott City, MD

Main Street, Ellicott City

My Fair City of Baltimore

Historic images of Baltimore throughout the 1900's.

The Baltimore Harbor in the early 1900s. A less then awe-inspiring skyline for the maritime city.


A view of the Harbor looking north in the vicinity of Charles Street. The Washington Monument in Mount Vernon can be seen in the background.

Another image of the Harbor taken much later in the 1900's. If you look close you can see the B&O Building which is now apart of Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

A view of City Hall before the construction of War Memorial Plaza and the War Memorial Building which was finished in 1921.

A view of the infamous East Baltimore Flagstaff Housing Projects. This image is mot likely from the 1960's.

Old Philippines 1898-1930

In celebration of the pound for pound best boxer of the world, the Philippines own Manny Pacquiao, who crushed De La Hoya last saturday night, scenes of how the cities in the Philippines used to look including Manilla. Of course Manilla being the site of the famous Ali-Frazier "Thrilla in Manilla" fight nack in 1975.

Catonsville back in the day...pictures from 1962 and beyond

These images were taken from the 1964 Catonsville Redevelopment Plan.

Towson back in the day - Pictures from 1962 and beyond

As the former town of Towson now a large edge city/suburb that is just due north of the Baltimore City line continues to redevelop the blog decided to look back at how the original Towson Town used to look.

The York Road-Dunaley Valley Road-Joppa Road-Allegheny Avenue interection before the circle.

Scenes from the core

Rio - City of Splendour (1936)

An interesting video of Rio De Janeiro in 1936. It would have been been great if the short documentary had shown Rio's favelas ala the movies City of God and City of Men to show a true portrait of the city.