Neighborhood Racial Change Research Articles

Census Tract and Neighborhood Racial Change and the Locational Decisions of Financial Services in Metro Detroit

Scholarship on the geography of US retail financial services consistently finds racialized patterns in the locations of traditional (e.g. banks, credit unions) and higher-cost or alternative (e.g. payday lenders, check cashers) financial services. While scholars tend to offer explanations based on spatial void and market segmentation hypotheses, we theorize these racialized patterns as consistent with a social reproduction of investment and divestment. We use a novel, longitudinal dataset that follows census tract- and neighborhood-level changes in racial demographics and financial services in Detroit during the pre- and post-Recession periods. Changes in the locations of financial services follow changes in racial demographics, which occur in addition to the well-documented practice of targeting or avoiding tracts and neighborhoods based on their racial majority. These racialized patterns are heightened in the post-Great Recession period.

Diversifying Neighborhoods, Diversifying Schools? The Relationship Between Neighborhood Racial Change and School Segregation in New York City

College-educated White households have increasingly opted to live in central urban neighborhoods, transforming many parts of the urban core. While there is emerging evidence that schools may play a key part in this process, little is known about the extent of racial contract between children of gentrifier households and original residents. This study examines NYC’s gentrifying areas, and the changing racial diversity in schools. Using data from the Census and the National Center for Educational Statistics, this study finds that schools in NYC’s gentrifying areas have seen a reduction in racial segregation, more in traditional public schools than in charters. While this trend may be promising, high levels of segregation persist. Policy and research implications are discussed.

Distinguishing Causes of Neighborhood Racial Change: A Nearest Neighbor Design

Distinguishing Causes of Neighborhood Racial Change: A Nearest Neighbor Design

From Census Tracts to Local Environments: An Egocentric Approach to Neighborhood Racial Change.

Most quantitative studies of neighborhood racial change rely on census tracts as the unit of analysis. However, tracts are insensitive to variation in the geographic scale of the phenomenon under investigation and to proximity among a focal tract's residents and those in nearby territory. Tracts may also align poorly with residents' perceptions of their own neighborhood and with the spatial reach of their daily activities. To address these limitations, we propose that changes in racial structure (i.e., in overall diversity and group-specific proportions) be examined within multiple egocentric neighborhoods, a series of nested local environments surrounding each individual that approximate meaningful domains of experience. Our egocentric approach applies GIS procedures to census block data, using race-specific population densities to redistribute block counts of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians across 50-meter by 50-meter cells. For each cell, we then compute the proximity-adjusted racial composition of four different-sized local environments based on the weighted average racial group counts in adjacent cells. The value of this approach is illustrated with 1990-2000 data from a previous study of 40 large metropolitan areas. We document exposure to increasing neighborhood racial diversity during the decade, although the magnitude of this increase in diversity-and of shifts in the particular races to which one is exposed-differs by local environment size and racial group membership. Changes in diversity exposure at the neighborhood level also depend on how diverse the metro area as a whole has become.

New urbanism and race: An analysis of neighborhood racial change in suburban Atlanta

ABSTRACTSince 2000, local governments, planning agencies, and private development firms have sought to revitalize aging spaces in Atlanta’s suburbs by experimenting with new urbanist (re)development projects. Proponents of this strategy have lauded the potential of these projects to enhance social integration between people of diverse ages, races, and incomes. However, critics argue that, in practice, new urbanism has often failed to substantially increase racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity and may even facilitate residential segregation and displacement. This research contributes to these debates by using linear regressions to analyze how new urbanist projects constructed between 2000 and 2013 in Atlanta’s suburban town centers have impacted racial change in the neighborhoods where they have been built. Results suggest that new urbanist project construction is significantly correlated with declining Hispanic populations and increasing White populations, supporting arguments that theorize new urbanism as a tool to effectively whiten select spaces.

The Tie That Binds: White Church Response to Neighborhood Racial Change in Atlanta, 1960–1985

The Tie That Binds: White Church Response to Neighborhood Racial Change in Atlanta, 1960–1985

Predicting neighborhood racial change in large US metropolitan areas, 1990-2010.

Neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas experienced dramatic changes in racial composition during the 1990s and again during the 2000s. We ask to what extent does the recent period of neighborhood racial change reflect an extension of the local processes operative in the 1990s, processes characteristic of large metropolitan areas or the nation more generally, or reflect new dynamics. After classifying neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas into different types based on their racial composition and having harmonized a set of tracts to consistent boundaries, we use metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices from the 1990s to predict changes in neighborhood racial mix between 2000 and 2010. To capture scale effects, we repeat this using a set of pooled metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices and again using a national tract transition matrix. We show that the main dynamic at work across the metropolitan system is the underprediction of moderately diverse white majority tracts: i.e., in the 2000s, the rate of increase in the racial diversity of white majority tracts that transitioned from being predominantly white to moderately diverse was much higher than expected based on 1990s trends. In some metropolitan areas, shares of moderately diverse white tracts in 2010 are anticipated by their 1990s neighborhood dynamics, suggesting temporal stability and a locational specificity in these processes. Others experience a temporal rupture in these dynamics, and their moderately diverse white tract share is better anticipated by pooling transition information. The study also invites us to think about the nature of residential change currently taking place that we can capture in 2020 census data.

My Career as a Pragmatist

In this article Varady reviews his 46 years of teaching, scholarship, and service in housing policy and community development. His New York City (NY) upbringing led to interests in cities and public policy, which led to degrees in city planning and eventually to receiving his university's highest award for academic excellence. Varady's pragmatism offers realistic solutions, questions long-held attitudes, and seeks objectivity in research. Although he takes ideology seriously, he is not an ideologue. Here he explains how his pragmatic perspective affected his research on neighborhood racial change, public housing, housing vouchers, and middle income housing programs. His career is best measured by the success of his many students who have had the benefi ts of his years of experience in the fi eld of housing research in both America and Europe .

Measuring Neighborhood Diversity and Stability in Home-Buying: Examining Patterns by Race and Income in a Robust Housing Market

ABSTRACT:In recent years, there has been continued interest in prospects for the development and sustainability of both mixed-income and racially diverse communities. We examine an important contributor to racial and economic diversity and segregation—the geographic patterns of homebuyers. In particular, we examine the extent to which neighborhoods within the Chicago metropolitan area have obtained significant levels of income and racial diversity in home buying and maintained such diversity over the 1990s. We analyze the racial and income composition of homebuyers by census tract for two periods: 1993 to 1994 and 1999 to 2000. First, by comparing changes in home buying to 1990 to 2000 changes in cross-sectional census data, we find that changes in home-buying patterns are significant contributors to neighborhood racial change. We then find a significant decline in the proportion of whites buying into neighborhoods where nearly all buyers are white. The policy implications of our findings are described and discussed.

From Racial Zoning to Community Empowerment

This article shows how Birminghams interstate highway system attempted to maintain the racial boundaries that had been established by the citys 1926 racial zoning law. It shows how the construction of interstate highways through black neighborhoods in the city led to significant population loss in those neighborhoods and is associated with an increase in neighborhood racial change. Finally, the article shows how the citys black community moved from a position of quietly protesting the interstate highway system to one in which a black neighborhood forced government to alter plans that would have destroyed a section of a predominantly black public housing project. In so doing, the article shows how black neighborhoods, over time, moved from a position of adapting to the racial aspects of various planning tools to one in which they sought to modify these tools so that they would benefit, or at least not harm, the black community.

Is neighborhood racial succession place-specific?

This paper evaluates the geographic generality of the succession model of neighborhood racial change for the period 1970 to 1980. Using census data on racially mixed tracts, we determine whether white-to-black compositional shifts were equally common across the four regions and 58 central cities in our sample. Substantial variation occurred by region in the incidence and magnitude of racial succession; tracts in western cities departed most markedly from expectations. Even in other regions, some cities experienced more numerous instances of stability and displacement than of succession. These region and city effects persist when neighborhood characteristics believed to influence racial transition are controlled.

Neighborhood racial change, segregationist sentiments, and affirmative marketing policies

An econometric model of 1970–1980 neighborhood racial changes is estimated for census tracts in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio. Results indicate that 1970 tract percentage black, interacted with estimated segregationist sentiment for white residents, is the dominant explanatory variable, with its maximum marginal impact on loss of whites occurring at 35% black. Proximity to majority black tracts and intensity of white segregationist sentiments are also strongly associated with large variations in decadal racial changes. These racial contextual factors both abet white out-migration and deter white in-migration. “Affirmative marketing” policies conducted by the Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights jurisdictions resulted in greater integration of initially all-white areas and less racial change in substantially integrated areas.

White Response to Neighborhood Racial Change

Abstract In this study of ten cities, data for tracts that underwent racial transition were employed. Normal household turnover rates were predicted on the basis of nonracial housing and demographic characteristics. It was found that the white population of these tracts exhibited abnormally high household turnovers, indicating “white flight” from changing areas. The in-migration of whites was found to fall short of both the level necessary to replace those whites who actually moved out, and the level needed to replace whites who would have moved under conditions of racial stability.

The Effect of School Desegregation on Housing Prices

SINCE 1954 nearly all vestiges of legal segregation of public schools in the South have been eliminated. But, at the same time, the suburbanization of households in Southern cities has contributed to the de facto resegregation of some schools. Just as the Tiebout hypothesis (1956) suggests that households locate according to their preferences regarding local public goods, there is some evidence to indicate that preferences for segregated schools may have contributed to this resegregation. Glantz and Delaney (1973) found that, by one measure, metropolitan residential segregation increased more during the 1960's in Southern metropolitan areas -where city schools were substantially desegregated than in the Northern metropolitan areas studied. And for some organizations, a primary reason for supporting recently ordered metropolitan desegregation plans which would effectively combine city and suburban school systems is the belief that desegregation of city schools alone merely contributed to white flight from the city.' But, because there are other factors which may also cause suburbanization of whites, such as employment decentralization and the growth of Negro ghettos, it is not clear whether school desegregation has had an independent effect on the demand for housing by households. This paper presents an analysis of housing prices to determine whether desegregation has an independent effect on the price paid by whites for housing. Since the supply of housing is relatively inelastic in the short run, an effect of this kind would support the hypothesis that desegregation affects households' demand for housing. While shifts in demand will result primarily in price effects in the short run, quantity changes and locational rearrangement will be most important in the long run. In order to determine if shifts in demand have accompanied desegregation, this paper will examine such price effects. The metropolitan area studied is Atlanta, Georgia, a Southern city which experienced school desegregation and apparent white flight during the 1960's. In 1960, a year before desegregation was begun, 37.2 % of the students in the city school system were Negro. By 1970 this figure was 67.1%. During the decade the proportion of Negro families in the city rose from 34.0% to 47.7%o. These changes reflect a number of different locational trends, one of the most important of which was a rapid growth in the city's Negro population. In order to assess the independent effect of school desegregation on housing demand, it is above all necessary to separate the effect of school racial composition from that of neighborhood racial composition, as well as other supply and demand factors affecting housing prices. The analysis presented in this paper uses data on housing prices and characteristics drawn from 1960 and 1970 census tract reports for Atlanta. The comparatively rapid end to de jure segregation in that city during the decade of the 1960's provides a unique opportunity to separate the effects of neighborhood and school integration. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that school desegregation does have a significant effect on housing prices, independent of neighborhood racial change. Section I discusses the use of housing prices in determining the effect of public service characteristics on housing demand. Sections II and III describe the data and the empirical findings. Section IV summarizes the analysis. Received for publication December 3, 1973. Revision acaccepted for publication July 30, 1974. * I am grateful to Professors Martin Feldstein, John Kain, Richard Freeman, and Gregory Ingram, members of the public finance and urban economics seminars at Harvard, and referees for this Review for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Financial support was provided by the Ford Foundation. 1 See, for example, the testimony of William L. Taylor, Director of the Center for National Policy Review in hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, November 30, 1971, p. 10475 or Junie Brown, City School Case: No End in Sight, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 31, 1972, pp. IA, 6A.