Thread: Data shows how major U.S. cities are slowly re-segregating

Data shows how major U.S. cities are slowly re-segregating

BY KENYA DOWNS March 7, 2016 at 3:43 PM EDT

A new study suggests places like New York City are experiencing gradual re-segregation based on white avoidance of diverse neighborhoods. Photo by Jeff Greenberg/ Getty Images

Cities in America are slowly becoming more segregated, according to a new study published in Sociological Science. Data compiled by American University professors Michael Bader and Siri Warkentien finds that New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston are experiencing a slower, steadier version of “white flight” that could produce re-segregation over time. In fact, 35 percent of the neighborhoods surveyed will likely re-segregate within the next 20 years. And this change is part of a trend happening in cities nationwide.

According to the study, cities are undergoing a process called gradual succession. It’s the idea is that “neighborhoods will change from one group to another group over many, many years and not so much whites fleeing neighborhoods rapidly,” said Bader, who is the lead researcher. “It will appear integrated for some time but will eventually transition to all one group, essentially re-segregating.” This results in blacks becoming concentrated into small areas of cities and inner suburbs. Latinos and Asians are segregating into neighborhood clusters throughout metropolitan areas.


Chicago, the country’s third largest city, has also consistently been one of the most segregated. The suburbs are experiencing a growth in integration largely due to gentrification and gradual succession from the city. Photo courtesy of American University.

Bader and Warkentien assessed the degree of racial change among blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians from 1970 to 2010 in the country’s four largest metropolitan areas, identifying common trajectories of movement. Neighborhoods with modest integration, or at least 10 percent of another race, have experienced gradual succession. Over time, these communities will become dominated by one racial group. The study’s website offers an interactive map breaking down each city’s trajectory.

Much of this gradual succession is not a consequence of white flight, but rather white avoidance. White flight, the post-Civil Rights era migration of whites from cities to the suburbs, mostly ended in the 1970s.

Now, whites are typically staying in integrated neighborhoods – so long as the integration comes to them. Compared to blacks and Latinos, who are actively moving to different neighborhoods, whites are less likely to move into communities that are already integrated. Bader said that contributes to neighborhood re-segregation.

“For example,” he said, “if a neighborhood is all white in 1980 and African-Americans begin to move into that neighborhood, those whites families already there aren’t fleeing. But other whites will more than likely not move into that neighborhood as well. So in time the neighborhood will become all black. It will re-segregate.”

Unlike previous research, this study compares the same places in a city over time and accounts for changes specifically within neighborhoods that are already considered integrated. That’s usually the presence of a second racial group defined by an arbitrary percentage. With this “growth mixture model,” Bader said, the data sends a clear message that neighborhoods are actually becoming more segregated than originally projected.

“Previous studies have only looked at the presence of multiple racial groups and not the degree to which they’re integrated,” he said. “So many neighborhoods have appeared to be integrated simply because there were enough blacks and whites to meet a specific threshold.”
This map of Los Angeles shows that amid areas of durable integration (shown in purple), many other communities are experiencing varying trajectories of gradual succession. The study estimates these neighborhoods will become re-segregated within the next two decades. Photo courtesy of American University.

On the other hand, many neighborhoods are steadily integrating. As the above map of Los Angeles shows, there are some communities where multiple groups are living together (shown with purple highlights) and that doesn’t appear to be changing. Segregation has decreased overall as well, especially among African-Americans and in suburbs. While many scholars predict segregation will continue to decline, Bader says this new research provides another way to understand our communities.

“It shows we’ve made lot of progress since Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve moved to a time where race does not influence what's happening in people’s lives, including where we choose to live. And that affects how we address racial inequality and public policy.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/...-not-for-long/

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Top 20 Cities Americans Are Ditching

7/22/15
Erin Roman
Wei Lu

New York City, Los Angeles, Honolulu: They're all places you would think would be popular destinations for Americans. So it might come as a surprise that these are among the cities U.S. residents are fleeing in droves.

The map below shows the 20 metropolitan areas that lost the greatest share of local people to other parts of the country between July 2013 and July 2014, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The New York City area ranked 2nd, losing about a net 163,000 U.S. residents, closely followed by a couple surrounding suburbs in Connecticut. Honolulu ranked fourth and Los Angeles ranked 14th. The Bloomberg calculations looked at the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas.
Interestingly, these are also the cities with some of the highest net inflows of people from outside the country. That gives many of these cities a steadily growing population, despite the net exodus of people moving within the U.S.

So what's going on here? Michael Stoll, a professor of public policy and urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles, has an idea. Soaring home prices are pushing local residents out and scaring away potential new ones from other parts of the country, he said. (Everyone knows how unaffordable the Manhattan area has become.)

And as Americans leave, people from abroad move in to these bustling cities to fill the vacant low-skilled jobs. They are able to do so by living in what Stoll calls "creative housing arrangements" in which they pack six to eight individuals, or two to four families, into one apartment or home. It's an arrangement that most Americans just aren't willing to pursue, and even many immigrants decide it's not for them as time goes by, he said.

In addition, the growing demand for high-skilled workers, especially in the technology industry, brought foreigners who possess those skills to the U.S. They are compensated appropriately and can afford to live in these high-cost areas, just like Americans who hold similar positions. One example is Washington, D.C., which had a lot of people from abroad arriving to soak up jobs in the growing tech-hub, Stoll said.

Other areas weren't so lucky. Take some of the Rust Belt cities that experienced fast drops in their American populations, like Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo, even though they are relatively inexpensive places to live. These cities didn't get enough international migrants to make up for the those who left, a reflection of the fact that locals were probably leaving out of a lack of jobs.

This is part of a multiple-decade trend of the U.S. population moving away from these manufacturing hubs to areas in the Sun Belt and the Pacific Northwest, Stoll said. Retiring baby boomers are also leaving the Northeast and migrating to more affordable places with better climates.

This explains why the majority of metropolitan areas in Florida and Texas, as well as west-coast cities like Portland, had an influx of people.

El Paso, Texas, the city that residents fled from at the fastest pace, also saw a surprisingly small number of foreigners settling in given how close it is to Mexico.
"A lot of young, reasonably educated people are having a hard time finding work there," Stoll said. "They're not staying in town after they graduate," leaving for the faster-growing economies of neighboring metro areas like Dallas and Austin, he said.

Methodology: Bloomberg ranked 100 of the most populous U.S. metropolitan areas based on their net domestic migration rates, from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014, as a percentage of total population as of July 2013. Domestic migration refers to people moving within the country (e.g. someone moving from New York City to San Francisco). A negative rate indicates more people leaving than coming in. International migration refers to a local resident leaving for a foreign country or someone from outside the U.S. moving into the U.S.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...s-are-ditching