City and Community article encourages new thinking on African American residential patterns before the Civil Rights Era
September 29, 2010 at 6:28 pm | Posted in cities, geography, housing, neighborhoods, race, what to read | Leave a commentIn the newly published article, “African American Locational Attainment Before the Civil Rights Era,” (City & Community, volume 9, September 2010), Lance Freeman challenges conventional wisdom that prior to the Civil Rights era, blacks of all classes lived side-by-side due to intense discrimination. According to this view, individual socioeconomic status did not translate into improved locational outcomes. By analyzing individual-level data from the 1910-1950 Public Use Microdata Samples, Freeman reveals how individual-level socioeconomic status translated into neighborhood-level outcomes for blacks. Among blacks, individual-level socioeconomic status played no role in determining residential proximity to whites. However, individual-level socioeconomic status for blacks was an important determinant of other neighborhood outcomes. His ground-breaking research suggests that upper-stratum blacks did indeed live in neighborhoods set apart from poorer blacks.
More information about this article available at:
The shrinking of Detroit
February 25, 2010 at 2:19 pm | Posted in geography, housing, neighborhoods, poverty | Leave a commentFacing a $360 million smaller budget, a dwindling tax basis, and a substantially weakened ability to provide services, Detroit appears to have begun the process of downsizing. From the Detroit News: “… Mary Bing said Wednesday he “absolutely” intends to relocate residents from desolate neighborhoods and is bracing for inevitable legal challenges when he unveils his downsizing plan. In his strongest statements about shrinking the city since taking office, Bing told WJR-760 AM the city is using internal and external data to decide ‘winners and losers.’ The city plans to save some neighborhoods and encourage residents to move from others, he said. ‘If we don’t do it, you know this whole city is going to go down. I’m hopeful people will understand that,’ Bing said.” The reactions are predictable. One less ring in the city’s nested concentric circles?
New book examines the historical mechanisms behind residential exploitation
February 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm | Posted in housing, neighborhoods, new books, race, reading list, what to read | Leave a comment
Rutgers University History Professor Beryl Satter, highlights the financial mechanisms of residential segregation in her new book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America. The daughter of Mark Satter, a Chicago lawyer who uncovered redlining tactics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Satter highlights the history that is buried in the minds of so many Chicago families, especially hers. Placing the story of a young African American couple, Albert and Sallie Bolton, at the center of the book, Satter provides personal examples of the hardship endured by African Americans during the Great Migration. The book goes into depth about contract selling, the practice in which landlords sold African Americans overpriced homes, kept the titles until black homeowners paid them off, and charged excessive interest rates to insure they never could. Contract selling cost thousands of migrating blacks their livelihoods and solidified many of the economic disparities in housing and access to credit that social scientists are working to understand today.
Altanta set to eliminate all public housing—what’s next?
December 4, 2009 at 8:44 pm | Posted in cities, economic development, housing, neighborhoods, poverty | Leave a comment
Researchers at Georgia State University file a preliminary report on the consequences of poverty deconcentration in Atlanta. From Deirdre Oakely, one of the authors of the report: “By early 2010 Atlanta is poised to become the first city in the Nation to eliminate all of its traditional public housing stock. The GSU Urban Health Initiative is following approximately 300 relocated residents across six public housing communities earmarked for demolition…. Do they end up in better neighborhoods and have improved and more stable living conditions? How is their health and overall well-being affected by relocation? …Findings suggest that the families are moving to other poor, segregated neighborhoods, but that these neighborhoods are not as poor as the public housing communities. However, our findings also show a pattern of geographic clustering of families which is suggestive of reconcentration. For the seniors, the destination neighborhoods are far poorer and more segregation than the origin ones. This raises some serious concerns about the fate of relocated residents from the public housing senior high rises.” See also, a recent House hearing on the future of public housing (with thanks to Jim Frasier) and a PBS expose on mismanagement in Miami-Dade public housing (with thanks to Andy Beveridge).
Saving Detroit?
November 20, 2009 at 11:46 am | Posted in amenities, economic development, housing, neighborhoods, poverty | Leave a comment
With the housing market continuing to defy optimists, the economy months away from generating new jobs, and its auto industry clinging to dear life, the State of Michigan has apparently not given up on its cities. From the South Bend Tribune: “The Michigan State Housing Development Authority is seeking $290 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for its New Michigan Urban Neighborhood plan targeting the 12 largest municipalities, including Lansing, Detroit, Highland Park, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.” The HUD program is allocating nearly $2 billion to stabilize neighborhoods and avoid the severe deterioration of cities that has followed sustained economic crises in the past. Detroit is hoping for $53 million, which could not come at a better time, as the city faces hundreds of millions in deficits and its commercial property values—after two years of falling home values—begin their own “ nose dive.”
And yet its downtown thrives?
Chicago’s mixed-income housing begins its 11th year
October 6, 2009 at 4:14 pm | Posted in cities, economic development, housing, neighborhoods, poverty | Leave a commentTerry Peterson’s legacy with the Chicago Housing Authority may very well lie in his efforts to create viable mixed-income housing. However, the plan has experienced numerous setbacks since its inception. Although the first ten years saw the demise of some of the country’s most notorious complexes, such as Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes, many of the latest setbacks arrived with the economic downturn. Other issues are more ideological in nature. Ideally, the new mixed-income communities promote cross-class socioeconomic unity while providing access to those citizens traditionally outside the realm of top-notch resources. Chicago Public Radio examined this issue further. The story can be found here.
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