A recent study suggests that American housing bubble influenced racial segregation:

In a paper released earlier this year, researchers Amine Ouazad and Romain Rancière show how the credit boom affected the racial makeup of U.S. neighborhoods. Expanded credit led some black households to leave mostly black neighborhoods for more racially mixed neighborhoods, a move consistent with buying larger or newer homes in areas with better schools or more amenities. Yet at the same time, their report finds that the credit boom led still more white households to leave racially mixed neighborhoods for mostly white neighborhoods—meaning greater isolation for black households…

Given easier access to credit, black households moved into more mixed neighborhoods—but not at the rates that whites households were leaving them. And black households found little purchase in mostly white neighborhoods, Ouazad explains…

“Empirically, what we observe is that black households tend to become homeowners in their own neighborhoods or in mixed neighborhoods,” Ouazad says, “whereas white households used their mortgage credit to move into mostly white neighborhoods.”

The researchers say they were surprised by these findings. Yet, this fits the longer-term patterns in American life: when they are able to, whites tend to move away from blacks. While we may not be in the era of racial covenants, restricted deeds, and redlining (early 1900s) or blockbusting and white flight (post-World War II), whites still express their preference to live in mostly white neighborhoods rather than live with blacks.

It would be worthwhile to then track these neighborhoods that have experienced significant racial change just before and after the housing bubble. What happens in the long-term? Once whites leave, do the neighborhoods (often suburbs) become majority black or do they also offer space for other non-whites? And do those attractive amenities blacks sought continue to exist, thrive, or decline over time?