This website is designed to help you explore patterns of racial composition in major US metropolitan areas and individual states.
http://mixedmetro.us/
Friday, August 3, 2012
The Rise of Economic Segregation
s Americans are growing farther apart on the income scale, we are also effectively moving apart from each other within cities, into our own economic enclaves. So why is that? The answer, Taylor says, may lie more in human behavior than economic data.
"We know over the whole entirety of human history that people have a tremendous tendency to cluster among themselves, whether in tribes, whether in nations," Taylor says. "Like attracts like. That’s not always the case for some people who value diversity. But it’s sort of hardwired into human nature."
(To pause for a note on data: Pew is defining "upper-income" households as those earning more than $104,400 a year, or double the national median income. "Low-income" households are those earning less than $34,000, or two-thirds the national median. Pew also adjusted these thresholds for local cost of living).
The most economically segregated large cities in America are all in Texas: San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas top the list.
Pew isn’t in the business of coming right out and telling us that we should wring our hands over all this growing economic segregation (and for what it’s worth, America is still more segregated by race than by income, even as those trends move in opposite directions). But it’s hard to interpret this as anything other than bad news.
"I do think it’s appropriate to observe that since the very beginning of our country, our quasi-official motto has been E pluribus unum – out of many, one," Taylor says. "One could make the argument that if increasingly we live among our own kind, whether we measure that by race or ethnicity, by income, by ideology or by partisanship, that may call into question the strength of the unum. We’re doing great on the pluribus.”
-Atlantic Cities
"We know over the whole entirety of human history that people have a tremendous tendency to cluster among themselves, whether in tribes, whether in nations," Taylor says. "Like attracts like. That’s not always the case for some people who value diversity. But it’s sort of hardwired into human nature."
(To pause for a note on data: Pew is defining "upper-income" households as those earning more than $104,400 a year, or double the national median income. "Low-income" households are those earning less than $34,000, or two-thirds the national median. Pew also adjusted these thresholds for local cost of living).
The most economically segregated large cities in America are all in Texas: San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas top the list.
Pew isn’t in the business of coming right out and telling us that we should wring our hands over all this growing economic segregation (and for what it’s worth, America is still more segregated by race than by income, even as those trends move in opposite directions). But it’s hard to interpret this as anything other than bad news.
"I do think it’s appropriate to observe that since the very beginning of our country, our quasi-official motto has been E pluribus unum – out of many, one," Taylor says. "One could make the argument that if increasingly we live among our own kind, whether we measure that by race or ethnicity, by income, by ideology or by partisanship, that may call into question the strength of the unum. We’re doing great on the pluribus.”
-Atlantic Cities
Reimagining an Entire Neighborhood Through Murals
The Dutch art duo Haas and Hahn, comprised of Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, have embarked on a mural project that is strikingly similar to the high wire act of jazz improvisation.
The artists were commissioned by the City of Philadelphia and its Mural Arts Program to paint a section of Germantown Avenue as part of an ongoing revitalization effort targeted at stagnant commercial corridors. Located in the central part of North Philadelphia a few blocks east of Broad Street, the neighborhood is better known for its abandoned houses than its arts scene. The pair began the project a year ago, moving into a tiny white house directly behind the Village of Arts & Humanities.
Urhahn credits El Sawyer at the Village of Arts & Humanities, a community-based nonprofit organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization through the arts, with orchestrating the duo's introduction to the neighborhood. “We didn’t just show up and start painting. We showed up and started making friends, talked to people, tried to get to know the neighborhood," says Urhahn. "Basically the first half-year we talked to everybody form the police officers to the guys on the corner and everyone in between. Especially the store owners."
"The point is not to change the neighborhood," Urhahn says. "We don’t bring answers, we have to define questions and to start the conversation."
-The Atlantic Cities
The artists were commissioned by the City of Philadelphia and its Mural Arts Program to paint a section of Germantown Avenue as part of an ongoing revitalization effort targeted at stagnant commercial corridors. Located in the central part of North Philadelphia a few blocks east of Broad Street, the neighborhood is better known for its abandoned houses than its arts scene. The pair began the project a year ago, moving into a tiny white house directly behind the Village of Arts & Humanities.
Urhahn credits El Sawyer at the Village of Arts & Humanities, a community-based nonprofit organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization through the arts, with orchestrating the duo's introduction to the neighborhood. “We didn’t just show up and start painting. We showed up and started making friends, talked to people, tried to get to know the neighborhood," says Urhahn. "Basically the first half-year we talked to everybody form the police officers to the guys on the corner and everyone in between. Especially the store owners."
"The point is not to change the neighborhood," Urhahn says. "We don’t bring answers, we have to define questions and to start the conversation."
-The Atlantic Cities
How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain, Part 2
Our results showed that perceived restorativeness in urban forests was strongly affected by closure of view to the urban matrix through the forest vegetation. This means that perceived restorativeness was higher inside the forest with a closed (i.e. no) view to the urban matrix as compared to semi-closed and open views.
The most intriguing conclusion to be drawn here is that the size of an urban park isn't nearly as important as the density of its vegetation. Even when a nature site borders an urban road or housing development, it can function as a restorative place so long as it offers easy access to a dense interior. In other words, the ultimate goal is not to see the city for the trees.
-The Atlantic Cities
The most intriguing conclusion to be drawn here is that the size of an urban park isn't nearly as important as the density of its vegetation. Even when a nature site borders an urban road or housing development, it can function as a restorative place so long as it offers easy access to a dense interior. In other words, the ultimate goal is not to see the city for the trees.
-The Atlantic Cities
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Living in Some Parts of Chicago Can Take More Than a Decade Off Your Life!!!!!
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/08/living-some-parts-chicago-can-take-more-decade-your-life/2781/
Researchers with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods with a median income higher than $53,000 a year have a life expectancy almost 14 years longer than Chicagoans who live in communities with a median income below $25,000.
This research reinforces an idea we’ve written about previously: that where you live may be the most important determinant of your health.
"Place really is the fundamental [issue]," says Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Center for Political and Economic Studies. "Residential segregation is really the fundamental driver of many of the health inequalities that we see."
"It is unacceptable in the world's wealthiest society that a person's life can be cut short by more than a decade simply because of where one lives and factors over which he or she has no control."
The researchers also frame this problem in another way: Chicagoans with the worst access to chain supermarkets and large independent grocery stores (in the bottom quintile) have an average life expectancy that's 11 years shorter than Chicagoans with the best access to food (in the top quintile).
This doesn’t mean that when grocery stores disappear, people die prematurely. Rather, the patterns on these maps reveal that numerous forces are all intersecting in the same parts of the city: Neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are also the neighborhoods with the lowest educational attainment and the least access to pharmacies and food, and they’re also the neighborhoods where the city’s minorities tend to be segregated, and where the health outcomes tend to be the worst. The correlations are just too strong to ignore. As the report warns: "These place-based patterns are neither arbitrary nor benign."
These communities, Smedley says, have experienced long-running patterns of disinvestment (by grocery chains, by employers, by banks, by cities), and health inequalities appear to be one result of it.
-The Atlantic Cities
Researchers with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods with a median income higher than $53,000 a year have a life expectancy almost 14 years longer than Chicagoans who live in communities with a median income below $25,000.
This research reinforces an idea we’ve written about previously: that where you live may be the most important determinant of your health.
"Place really is the fundamental [issue]," says Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Center for Political and Economic Studies. "Residential segregation is really the fundamental driver of many of the health inequalities that we see."
"It is unacceptable in the world's wealthiest society that a person's life can be cut short by more than a decade simply because of where one lives and factors over which he or she has no control."
The researchers also frame this problem in another way: Chicagoans with the worst access to chain supermarkets and large independent grocery stores (in the bottom quintile) have an average life expectancy that's 11 years shorter than Chicagoans with the best access to food (in the top quintile).
This doesn’t mean that when grocery stores disappear, people die prematurely. Rather, the patterns on these maps reveal that numerous forces are all intersecting in the same parts of the city: Neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are also the neighborhoods with the lowest educational attainment and the least access to pharmacies and food, and they’re also the neighborhoods where the city’s minorities tend to be segregated, and where the health outcomes tend to be the worst. The correlations are just too strong to ignore. As the report warns: "These place-based patterns are neither arbitrary nor benign."
These communities, Smedley says, have experienced long-running patterns of disinvestment (by grocery chains, by employers, by banks, by cities), and health inequalities appear to be one result of it.
-The Atlantic Cities
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