Tag Archives: cities

Not so fast on integrated American neighborhoods

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Taking another angle on residential integration (based on data from the American Community Survey – also reported on here) suggests it is a very slow process. Two sociologists suggest some has changed – metropolitan whites now on average live in neighborhoods that are 74% white (the figure was 88% in 1980). But minorities still have similar segregation figures to 2000:

•Black-white segregation averaged 65.2 in 2000 and 62.7 now.

•Hispanic-white segregation was 51.6 in 2000 vs. 50 today.

•Asian-white segregation has grown from 42.1 to 45.9.

This index score (and I think this is a dissimilarity index) ranges from 0 to 100 with a score of 0 meaning that two groups are completely integrated while a score of 100 means that two groups live completely separately or in different neighborhoods.

Based on this analysis, it looks like the issue of residential segregation is one that will be with us for a long time yet. While there was improvement for some groups, there were  negative or very limited changes for other groups. All that said, residential segregation looks like it is still an entrenched feature of American life.

Lower levels of segregation in many cities according to the American Community Survey

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Residential segregation, primarily between whites and blacks, is a critical issue when considering the historical development and current state of American development patterns and way of life. But new findings from the most recent American Community Survey (the Census Bureau’s yearly survey) suggest that segregation levels have decreased in many cities:

Atlanta is one of several predominantly Southern and Western cities that showed a noticeable integration trend over the last five years as both middle-class blacks and whites moved into each other’s neighborhoods, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey of 10 million Americans, released Tuesday…

Seventy-five percent of the largest 100 US metro areas showed neighborhood segregation rates slipping to levels not seen for more than a century…

Ethnic integration failed to show the same kind of gains…

It isn’t that the North, which has lagged behind the South and West in integration rates, has dramatically different attitudes on race. Rather, new housing and job opportunities in the South and West have helped to spur integration there.

This is interesting, and potentially uplifting, news. A number of sociologists have called attention to this issue in recent decades, perhaps most notably in American Apartheid published in the early 1990s. Recent maps show that many cities have a highly visible divide between different population groups. With these recent findings, the question may now be: how much more integration might we see in American cities? Is this a short-term trend or is this indicative of a slow, steady rise of integration in American cities?

What I would like to see is a more specific breakdown of what cities improved on integration and which did not. The article suggests that cities in the South and West had increasing rates of integration while segregation decreased less in the North. This is a reminder that in American cities, segregation has been more prominent in northern cities, what scholars (according to the article) call “the ghetto belt.” Are there lessons from the cities that improved in integration that can be exported to other cities?

Additionally, how have segregation/integration rates changed in suburbs or perhaps in whole metropolitan regions?

Looking to secure the suburban vote

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Joel Kotkin argues that both major American political parties would do well to develop a strategy that would consistently appeal to the suburban vote. Here is how one journalist describes Kotkin’s view of American politics at the moment:

Demography in the US favors the Democrats. The fastest growing parts of the electorate don’t look good for Republicans.

Job creation will be the biggest public policy theme for some time to come, and Republicans haven’t quite gotten this issue right even as Democrats botch it.

Class, more than race, will determine America’s political future. The wide swath of largely suburban, skilled workers is up for grabs, and neither party has a vision for improving their quality of life – which is why they keep wreaking havoc on each Party’s plans.

Republicans have failed among Latinos and millennials and will pay for it for some time to come if they don’t reverse the trends they’ve helped start.

Kotkin has been talking about this for a while – he suggested right after this last election that the results went against the “creative class” and more middle-class suburbanites voted for Republicans.

So what would a successful suburban strategy look like? When I looked at all the campaign material that came to my house and listened to candidates talk leading up to the last election, many of them were going after the middle class vote: making homeownership a priority, talk about job creation, keeping the American Dream alive. But if Kotkin is right, the middle class swung one way in 2008 and then another way in 2010.

One way to approach this would be to think what suburbanites have historically sought in moving to suburbs: some space, getting away from the city (the noise, health issues, crime, “others”), owning a single-family home, good schools, good jobs, safety (particularly for kids), and a suburban lifestyle. It seems like both parties could approach these issues, though they might do so from different angles.

h/t Instapundit

Gallery of 2010 Smart Growth award winners

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“Smart growth” is a popular term. It typically implies an antidote to sprawl and a quest to construct or design more people-oriented, mixed-use, and sustainable places. Here is a gallery of images that show the winners of the EPA’s 2010 Smart Growth Achievement award. Read more about the award winners (and see some more pictures) in the EPA’s explanation of the award and the winners.

These look like attractive places. One of the projects was described as “an outdoor public living room” while a number of the other projects reduced the barrier between people and streets.

It is interesting to note that these winners were all in large cities (New York City, Baltimore, Portland, San Francisco) or in small towns (a corridor of Maine communities). Were there any suburban places in the running for this award?

h/t The Infrastructurist

The methodology behind Money’s 2010 best places to live

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Every year, Money magazine publishes a list of “the best places to live.” I’ve always enjoyed this list as it attempts to distill what communities truly match what people would desire in a community. The winner in 2010 (in the August issue) was Eden Prairie, Minnesota

But one issue with this list is how the communities are selected. In 2009, the list was about small towns, communities between 8,500 and 50,000. In 2010, the list was restricted to “small cities,” places with 50,000 to 300,000 residents. Here is how the magazine selected its 2010 list of communities to grade and rank:

746
Start with all U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 to 300,000.

555
Exclude places where the median family income is more than 200% or less than 85% of the state median and those more than 95% white.

322
Screen out retirement communities, towns with significant job loss, and those with poor education and crime scores. Rank remaining places based on housing affordability, school quality, arts and leisure, safety, health care, diversity, and several ease-of-living criteria.

100
Factor in additional data on the economy (including fiscal strength of the government), jobs, housing, and schools. Weight economic factors most heavily.

30
Visit towns and interview residents, assessing traffic, parks, and gathering places and considering intangibles like community spirit.

1
Select the winner based on the data and reporting.

A couple of questions I have:

1. I agree that it can be hard to compare communities with 10,000 people and 150,000 people. But can the list from each year be called “the best place to live” if the communities of interest change?

2. I wonder how they chose the median income cutoffs. So this cuts out places that might be “too exclusive” or “not exclusive enough.” Are these places not desirable to people?

3. Some measure of racial homogeneity is included in several steps. How many home buyers desire this? We know from a lot of research that whites tend to avoid neighborhoods with even moderate levels of African-Americans.

4. Weighting economic factors heavily seems to make sense. Jobs and economic opportunities are a good enticement for moving.

5. I would be interested to see what kind of information they collected on their 30 community visits. How many residents and leaders did they talk to? How does one measure “community spirit”? If a community says it has “community spirit,” how exactly do you check to see whether that is correct?

Overall, this is a complicated methodology that accounts for a number of factors. What I would like to know is how this list compares with how Americans make decisions about where to live. Do people want to move up to places like this and then stay there or is the dream for many to move on to more exclusive communities (if possible)? How many Americans could realistically afford to or possibly move into these communities?

(A side note: the four Chicago suburbs in the top 100 for 2010: Bolingbrook at #43, Naperville at #54, Mount Prospect at #56, and Arlington Heights at #59. Naperville used to rank much higher earlier in the 21st century – I wonder how it has slipped in the rankings.)

How location, particularly living in the city, affects health

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Two sociologists argue that location, particularly living in poor neighborhoods in large cities, can lead to more negative health outcomes:

“When trying to understand a person’s health and well-being, we believe that their zip code may be just as important a number to their physical health as their blood pressure or glucose level,” Fitzpatrick says in a statement.

Fitzpatrick and Mark LaGory of the University of Alabama at Birmingham have authored, “In Unhealthy Cities: Poverty, Race, and Place in America,” about high-poverty urban neighborhoods and the health of Americans…

For example, there have been numerous studies on how a concentration of fast-food restaurants in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods impacts the health of the residents, while other studies show many of these poor neighborhoods may not have a single grocery store offering fresh, nutritious food or safe places to exercise.

“Some parts of the city seemed to be designed to make people sick,” the authors say.

These conclusions are not surprising though they may contribute to the growing field of the sociology of wellness. I particularly like the last quote: “Some parts of the city seemed to be designed to make people sick.” This leads to a question: how could cities or neighborhoods be designed to make people healthy?

Reading about this reminded me about some of the rationale used by some of the first suburban residents in England and the United States. Among other factors, the suburbs were said to be healthier and have cleaner air. The big city, particularly by the late 1800s, was viewed as dirty and crowded. The single-family home allowed families to spread out and take in more of the country air.

I would be curious to see if this study, or other studies, could provide estimates of life expectancy for people with similar socio-economic status living in different locations.

Large cities with most, least crime

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CQ Press has compiled a list of the safest and least safe big cities in terms of crime:

The study by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year’s list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.

Detroit, Flint, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., rounded out the top five. For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, N.Y.

I would not have guessed St. Louis as topping this list. Of course, St. Louis doesn’t like this ranking and suggests that the crime situation in the city has been improving:

The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI. Some criminologists question the findings, saying the methodology is unfair.

Greg Scarbro, unit chief of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, said the FBI also discourages using the data for these types of rankings.

Kara Bowlin, spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said the city actually has been getting safer over the last few years. She said crime in St. Louis has gone down each year since 2007, and so far in 2010, St. Louis crime is down 7 percent.

Erica Van Ross, spokeswoman for the St. Louis Police Department, called the rankings irresponsible.

“Crime is based on a variety of factors. It’s based on geography, it’s based on poverty, it’s based on the economy,” Van Ross said.

“That is not to say that urban cities don’t have challenges, because we do,” Van Ross said. “But it’s that it’s irresponsible to use the data in this way.”

It probably doesn’t matter if methodology is good or bad for these rankings because what really matters is public perception. If St. Louis becomes known as a city of crime, comparable to places like Camden, Oakland, Detroit, and Flint, this could have a negative effect on the number of businesses and residents who want to move to the area. It is not a surprise to see the City of St. Louis fight back by attacking the data and also suggesting that crime rates have gone down in recent years (though this is relative and doesn’t give an indication of how their crime rate compares to other places).

(I was curious to see where Chicago and its suburbs, such as Naperville, ranked. Unfortunately, it looks like the data for the whole Chicago MSA was not available.)

Quick Review: More than Just Race

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This book, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, is the latest monograph by William Julius Wilson. I read this several months ago and haven’t reviewed it yet because I have been thinking about its approach and conclusions. Here is my quick take:

I am still not quite sure to make of this book. I ultimately think that it is too short and doesn’t spend upon time seriously doing what Wilson claims he wants to do: explore how structure and culture interact and affect poor inner-city neighborhoods. The book is written in a series that seems to be for a popular audience and it seems that Wilson is just limited in space and perhaps how academic the work can be and the number of studies he can cite. Additionally, although Wilson cites some interesting recent research (including Move To Opportunity research) involving cultural values, Wilson still sides with structure (his primary research focus for years) in the end though he suggests culture plays some role.

I contrast this book with what I heard at a culture and poverty panel at the American Sociological Association meetings in August in Atlanta. I felt that panel took culture much more seriously – indeed, several of the scholars were sociologists of culture who are trying to bring this growing subfield to a point where it can be recognized as having something important to add to discussions about poverty. This discussion featured some research in progress but these scholars seemed to put structure and culture on a more equal footing.

Of course, this is an emerging field of work. After research in the 1960s from people like Daniel Moynihan and Oscar Lewis were said to be “blaming the victim” when discussing culture and the role of values and norms in poor neighborhoods, structure was the primary focus for several decades when studying poverty. Wilson’s book may serve as an entry point or guide to the discussion of culture and poverty but those who seriously want to delve into the issues will need to look into other works.

(I might also quibble with Wilson’s definition of culture, the collection of values, norms, behaviors, traditions, etc. of a group. This leaves culture as a more passive phenomenon. I would prefer to use this definition when thinking about the sociology of culture: “processes of meaning-making.”)

Interactive maps of metropolitan America

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The Brookings Institute has put together a website with interactive data maps of metropolitan America. The data comes from the 2009 American Community Survey (done by the Census) and one can look at all sorts of variables across cities or metropolitan areas.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the tab that lets you compare suburbs alone across metropolitan regions. Very quickly, you can find that the suburbs of Syracuse, New York have the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites (93.1%), the suburbs of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, have the highest median household income ($96,478), and the suburbs of Modesto, California have the highest percentage of commuters traveling more than 90 minutes to work (7.2%).

Richard Florida cited by UK Conservatives

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The Economist takes a look into the background of urban thinker Richard Florida, who has recently been cited by leading British Conservatives. Here an excerpt about Florida’s background:

Although less well-known in Europe, he is as close to a household name as it is possible for an urban theorist to be in America. In his best-selling books, highly paid speeches and frequent television interviews, Mr Florida has extolled one core idea: that the creative sector is the growth engine for Western economies as menial work migrates to developing countries.

Mr Florida’s definition of creative goes beyond the obvious artists and musicians to include anyone open to new ideas. He says businesses must give space and flexibility to these freethinkers, and that cities must attract lots of them to be successful. This means they must be green, clean, tolerant and cultured, typically with large gay and ethnic-minority populations…

His superstar status, as much as his ideas, have made him enemies. One Canadian newspaper columnist, fed up with his high profile after he became head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at Toronto University three years ago, started handing out badges that read “Please stop talking about Richard Florida”. More seriously, other academics have denounced his “snake oil economics”, his use of statistics and his confusion of causation and coincidence. Joel Kotkin, another writer about cities, points out that over the past 20 years far more jobs in America have been created in boring suburbs than in the multicultural city centres beloved of Mr Florida.

He describes himself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

There are some interesting things to think about based on this story:

1. How much evidence is there that Florida’s ideas can bring about a “quick fix” to depressed locations? In England, are they looking to his ideas for a quick turnaround or is this a long-term project?

2. I’ve seen and read some of this criticism of Florida by other academics. Some of it did seem based on envy of his status and money-making abilities – his books have done well, he is an expensive speaker, and he has had the ear of a number of politicians. At the same time, there are legitimate concerns about whether his ideas work in the real world. I’m particularly struck by Kotkin’s criticism as noted in this story – job growth in America has been primarily in the suburbs.

3. In another part of the story, The Economist hints that politicians who court thinkers or adopt ideologies can often be left struggling to convey or act upon these ideas. On one hand, it is remarkable that Florida gets so much attention from politicians – few academics ever draw this kind of attention. On the other hand, when social scientists and urban thinkers do have a chance to influence politics, what are the outcomes?

h/t The Infrastructurist