Could young adults at their most experimental phase disrupt the cycle of segregation?
Britton did pull out one promising finding from an otherwise bleak report: Blacks and Hispanics who grew up in integrated neighborhoods later lived as adults in integrated neighborhoods, too, even after moving long-distance. That suggests at least a "bulwark against re-segregation," Britton says. "But," he adds, "it doesn’t point to a lot of reasons for optimism about major declines in residential segregation – particularly between blacks and whites, and even increasingly between Latinos and whites – over the next couple of decades."
There is one other way to interpret these findings: They suggest that fair-housing measures that enable black and Hispanic families to live in more integrated neighborhoods are all the more important because they have such long-term consequences. Those neighborhoods will likely impact not only the minority families living there, but also the types of neighborhoods their children grow up to live in. If there is a bright spot in this research, it is that integration may perpetuate itself in much the same way that segregation does.
Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Class-Divided Cities: Los Angeles Edition
Following the pattern we saw in the first post in this series on New York, L.A. too is divided and segmented by class. But unlike New York's pattern, with its heavy creative class concentration at the core in Manhattan and surrounding parts of Brooklyn and Jersey City, L.A.'s creative class, much of which is no doubt affiliated with the film and television industry, is more spread out along the coast. That said, L.A.'s class geography does not conform to a typical urban-suburban pattern, with lower-wage service workers concentrated in the urban core and the more affluent creative class at the suburban fringe. The pattern of creative class clustering seen in New York does carry over but is expressed in different forms. There are creative class pockets in the city and its downtown as well as in coastal suburbs.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
How Economic Development Is Changing the Geography of Urban Crime
"I found gun-related murders to be higher in metros with higher poverty levels, higher levels of inequality, more blue-collar working class economies, and higher shares of commuters who drive to work alone (a proxy for sprawl, among other factors)."
Safer, healthier cities draw and keep new residents away from the unsustainable suburbs and exurbs. But while the numbers point to positive trends on the whole, they also REVEAL our sacrifice zones: Cities that have not been revitalized in this recent wave, where we have allowed poverty and violence to concentrate, out of sight and mind — cities that go unmentioned in the wake of mass murders like the one in Newtown, though they are actually our mass murder capitals.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/how-economic-development-changing-geography-urban-crime/4187/
Safer, healthier cities draw and keep new residents away from the unsustainable suburbs and exurbs. But while the numbers point to positive trends on the whole, they also REVEAL our sacrifice zones: Cities that have not been revitalized in this recent wave, where we have allowed poverty and violence to concentrate, out of sight and mind — cities that go unmentioned in the wake of mass murders like the one in Newtown, though they are actually our mass murder capitals.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/how-economic-development-changing-geography-urban-crime/4187/
Friday, August 3, 2012
Mapping Diversity and Segregation in the USA
This website is designed to help you explore patterns of racial composition in major US metropolitan areas and individual states.
http://mixedmetro.us/
http://mixedmetro.us/
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
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
Friday, July 27, 2012
Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities
Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds
By SAM ROBERTS
William H. Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned that “the report sends a potentially harmful message that black-white residential separation is no longer a priority issue in this country.
“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black. Black segregation levels are even higher for children, signaling the continued separation of black and white families across communities with different levels of resources available for schools and other services important for nurturing the next generation.”
John R. Logan, a Brown sociologist, said: “If we want to understand the long-term trends in segregation, we have to be aware both of the progress and of the resistance to change. We are far from the ‘end of segregation.’ ”
Still, Professors Glaeser and Vigdor found that only 20 percent of blacks now live in “ghetto” neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population or more is black, compared with nearly 50 percent who lived in similar neighborhoods a half-century ago.
The findings in the report, titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership did not denigrate decades of desegregation efforts. In fact, the authors said, “there is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create the change.” But they concluded that housing desegregation was not a magic bullet in providing equal opportunity.
“Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt,” Professors Glaeser and Vigdor wrote. “At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”
The study’s definition of neighborhood was borrowed from the census: a tract that is home to 1,500 to 7,500 people. The analysis relied on the two most common segregation indexes: dissimilarity, or the proportion of individuals of either group that would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve perfect integration, and isolation, which measures neighborhoods where the share of the population of one group surpasses the citywide average.
By the dissimilarity index, Dallas and Houston are the least segregated big cities.
Los Angeles fared best on the isolation index.
Among cities with the largest black population, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis ranked highest in the dissimilarity index. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia did.
Since 1960, the share of blacks living in neighborhoods where they account for a minority of the population has risen to 59 percent from 30 percent.
“While it may be tempting to see the overwhelmingly white nature of many suburbs as evidence of stagnation or stasis, the presence of even modest numbers of African-Americans in suburbs demonstrates the remarkable change in American society,” the study said. “Indeed, measured by dissimilarity indices, suburbs are often among the most integrated parts of America.”
Only 424 of the nation’s 72,531 census tracts recorded no black residents. More than half were either in rural areas or in metropolitan regions where blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population. Every census tract in Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire recorded at least one black resident.
By SAM ROBERTS
William H. Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned that “the report sends a potentially harmful message that black-white residential separation is no longer a priority issue in this country.
“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black. Black segregation levels are even higher for children, signaling the continued separation of black and white families across communities with different levels of resources available for schools and other services important for nurturing the next generation.”
John R. Logan, a Brown sociologist, said: “If we want to understand the long-term trends in segregation, we have to be aware both of the progress and of the resistance to change. We are far from the ‘end of segregation.’ ”
Still, Professors Glaeser and Vigdor found that only 20 percent of blacks now live in “ghetto” neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population or more is black, compared with nearly 50 percent who lived in similar neighborhoods a half-century ago.
The findings in the report, titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership did not denigrate decades of desegregation efforts. In fact, the authors said, “there is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create the change.” But they concluded that housing desegregation was not a magic bullet in providing equal opportunity.
“Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt,” Professors Glaeser and Vigdor wrote. “At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”
The study’s definition of neighborhood was borrowed from the census: a tract that is home to 1,500 to 7,500 people. The analysis relied on the two most common segregation indexes: dissimilarity, or the proportion of individuals of either group that would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve perfect integration, and isolation, which measures neighborhoods where the share of the population of one group surpasses the citywide average.
By the dissimilarity index, Dallas and Houston are the least segregated big cities.
Los Angeles fared best on the isolation index.
Among cities with the largest black population, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis ranked highest in the dissimilarity index. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia did.
Since 1960, the share of blacks living in neighborhoods where they account for a minority of the population has risen to 59 percent from 30 percent.
“While it may be tempting to see the overwhelmingly white nature of many suburbs as evidence of stagnation or stasis, the presence of even modest numbers of African-Americans in suburbs demonstrates the remarkable change in American society,” the study said. “Indeed, measured by dissimilarity indices, suburbs are often among the most integrated parts of America.”
Only 424 of the nation’s 72,531 census tracts recorded no black residents. More than half were either in rural areas or in metropolitan regions where blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population. Every census tract in Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire recorded at least one black resident.
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