Revisiting Gentrification
The problem with neighborhood revitalization initiatives is it is hard to measure success using readily available census data. We want the neighborhoods to get “better”. But what does better look like? And for who?
This project emphasizes gentrification for two reasons.
One is philosophical and related to the concept of a theory of change. Neighborhood revitalization projects were designed to address the concentrated poverty and blight that has a negative impact on the community that lives there. Conceptually we would like to improve the well-being of peole in the community through the neighborhood, not simply give the neighborhood a face lift. The challenge is that if we are not careful about designing programs or measuring outcomes we will end up “improving” the neighborhood by pushing all of the residents out. For example, if we focus on things like income and educational outcomes for children, the easiest way to improve these metrics is to replace poor households that are moving with wealthier and better-educated families. This strategy is anti-thetical to the goal of improving quality of life and social mobility for residents.
The second reason why gentrification is important for this project is because it must be measured with data. You will find that if you change the defition of gentrification slightly, you can change the outcome greatly. Forcing you to operationalize gentrification in the study forces you to think critically about the data, and to pay attention to how others are using the same data.
Some recent studies have sounded the alarm that gentrification is accelerating: 20 percent of low-income communities experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2010, almost twice the rate of gentrification in the 1990s. (side note - please keep this statistic in mind for next week’s topic on urban renewal)
A recent study turns a lot of the debate on its head by using better data to track movement into and out of neighborhoods by poor families. They find that displacement caused by gentrification is way less than expected, and they call into question the way in which gentrification is measured.
Please read this short blog on the topic.
The research raises two important questions:
- how do we measure gentrification?
- how prevelant is it?
In next week’s lab on descriptive analysis of census tracts you will be asked to report on the level of gentrification you observe, which requires you to measure it. Note the diversity and nuance of some approached to measurement. For example, THIS METHODOLOGY by The Urban Displacement Project uses a taxonomy of five stages of gentrification to be more precise about the process.
For your YellowDig discussion this week propose a method for operationalizing the identification of gentrification in census data using variables in the harmonized census LTDB files. Specify:
(1) The criteria used to classify a census tract as eligible to be gentrified (a tract that is already wealthy and white cannot be further gentrified).
(2) The criteria you will use to determine whether the tract experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2010.
Explain your methodology to your classmates.
Next week, after you have finished your lab report back on what level of gentrification you found. Was it more or less than you expected?