Is Atlanta segregated? (Roswell, North Atlanta, Decatur: renters, crimes, townhome)

[duncan69]

did a drone take these pictures?

[Freeminds]

I am not sure what the government can do to change behaviors. If you are going to send your kid to a good school you need to make sure that kids isn't a hoodlum BEFORE he gets to the school. They school isn't going to change that. The home environment away from school has to change and I am not sure what the government can do to fix that.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by SAAN

Atlanta is very segregated. Sure you can name some areas where black, whites, hispanics, and asians live together like Gwinett, some of Cobb, and Northern Dekalb area near I85.

But after living in Stone Mountain for 20 yrs, many whites in Atlanta do not want to live around blacks, its sad but true. I watched South Dekalb basically pick up and move to Snellville and everything on Memorial Drive closed. The when blacks started moving to Snellville, Whites started moving further east to Loganville and I started to see many businesses and car dealer ships on the Memoria Dr & 78 close and start moving to the HWY 124 area. Many moved to Rockdale as well. Same with Clayton county as well too before the 5th runway was built, Riverdale was actually pretty nice. This is why ATL has traffic issues as everyone flooded 20-30 miles outside of the city and all clog up the roads trying to get back in in the mornings and out in the evenings.

But we can thank the city of Atlanta for closing the housing prohjects and giving vouchers to the tenants to go and move to the suburbs and destroy Riverdale, Stn Mtn, Lithonia,Decatur , and some of Snellville too. Many of these areas didnt have all the crime problems until these projects closed.

But anywhere in America you go its going to be a Black, White, Asisan, Hispanic areas, and some areas where everyone lives.

This is not accurate. Others can provide exact stats, but the number of people who were displaced from housing projects and ended up outside of the City of Atlanta is actually quite modest. The more general argument of gentrification of inner city neighborhoods isn't even a good explanation for why so many suburbs have gained such a huge AA population: we're talking about suburban AA population growth of an order of magnitude greater than the net population losses within the city.

[Freeminds]

Originally Posted by testa50

This is not accurate. Others can provide exact stats, but the number of people who were displaced from housing projects and ended up outside of the City of Atlanta is actually quite modest. The more general argument of gentrification of inner city neighborhoods isn't even a good explanation for why so many suburbs have gained such a huge AA population: we're talking about suburban AA population growth of an order of magnitude greater than the net population losses within the city.

Thugs from other cities.

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by SAAN

Atlanta is very segregated. Sure you can name some areas where black, whites, hispanics, and asians live together like Gwinett, some of Cobb, and Northern Dekalb area near I85.

^ What you write... ^

What I read.... > "Atlanta is very segregated. Sure some can name some areas where black, whites, hispanics, and asians live together, like the parts of the region where most people live."

You make some good observations, but I also think your underplaying just how many people live in many of these areas.

I think what has happened is you have a good part of town and a bad part of town and many areas in between.

Historically one group has been stuck in the bad part of town. No one wants to move from the good part to the bad part, but people do want to move up and more people than before have access or ways to do that.
Many are moving around within the parts.

The historic black areas, with some exceptions, are still largely places most people don't want to be. However, I think it is incorrect that in the other way around. There is a relatively healthy mix in the other parts and people aren't necessarily fleeing. They are staying around the areas where they can get to their jobs.

The other exception to this is the really high end areas are predominately controlled by the wealthiest group that has had control of that wealth for a long time. The single family home neighborhoods of the multi-million dollar homes are going to be mostly white.

That is why I posted that map with the diversity index.

Diversity is lower in most of Buckhead, South Dekalb, and West Atlanta.

It is luke warm in the more expensive middle class areas, like East Cobb, Milton Virginia Highland, Morningside, Druid Hills.

It is also luke warm or non-existent on the exurban fringe further from a job base.

It is really high in transitional areas and areas with mixed housing types, including areas on the good side of town. It is also really high in areas that are mostly middle class.


I agree and disagree with Ericson's earlier comments about Atlanta being in transition and things will settle in different patterns over time.

I think that is partly true, but I alot of research is showing we are separated by economic class more than ever before and it is the middle part that is ending up so diverse. I think for many areas diversity to some extent is here to stay, because people have greater ability to move around than they did before. The various social groups aren't separated as much economically, particularly in the lower-middle and middle classes.


I also do believe the housing voucher program, while the Olympics was a catalyst, wasn't just haphazardly done. We still continued destroying housing projects after the Olympics. I think there was a realization that many families were perpetually in projects from generation to generation and they were continually learning bad social habits from each other, rather than better social habits from others around them.

To an extent... I think it was also a retaliation of the small (spatially) city of Atlanta not being able to carry all of the social services burden for the region, while suburban areas could ignore it and have lower taxes. Atlanta for decades couldn't keep up with infrastructure needs like roads, sidewalks, and water/sewer.... and they had a higher tax rate. Part of that problem is they were left behind paying for social programs created by previous generations and the rest of the region didn't help out, so the city of Atlanta did the last thing they could (and ironically the same thing conservative suburbanites whined about for years; paying so much tax money into those social programs). I'm not sure many people new to town in the last 1-2 decades really realize that Atlanta's (proper) infrastructure condition, as bad as it is, is actually getting better than it was before... not worse.

To me this is what Atlantagreg's response is referring to.

I think ultimately we are doing the right thing, but it will take time for some bad social habits to die away and people to learn from each other better. In a sense... I feel like we are living with the problems caused by the short-sightedness of generations before us.

[cqholt]

I am not sure what the government can do to change behaviors. If you are going to send your kid to a good school you need to make sure that kids isn't a hoodlum BEFORE he gets to the school. They school isn't going to change that. The home environment away from school has to change and I am not sure what the government can do to fix that.

Why, there are rich little white kids that act just as hood, creating gangs, tagging buildings, selling drugs, etc. Its not just a black thing. I have also known kids that came from nothing, on government assistance, etc. got an education and became a productive citizen, as well as kids that were born with a silver spoon that just suck at life.

I also do believe the housing voucher program, while the Olympics was a catalyst, wasn't just haphazardly done. We still continued destroying housing projects after the Olympics. I think there was a realization that many families were perpetually in projects from generation to generation and they were continually learning bad social habits from each other, rather than better social habits from others around them.

The Olympics are not the only reason the housing projects were torn down, Demolished public housing projects in Atlanta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Atlanta used federal Hope 6 money, HOPE VI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, to tear down housing projects and replace them with mixed-income communities.

[Freeminds]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Why, there are rich little white kids that act just as hood, creating gangs, tagging buildings, selling drugs, etc. Its not just a black thing. I have also known kids that came from nothing, on government assistance, etc. got an education and became a productive citizen, as well as kids that were born with a silver spoon that just suck at life.

What do you mean by this and what was your point in posting it? No one said anything about race.

Plenty of parent with nothing raise good kids and vise versa. It just so happens that now the parent's who aren't doing their job at home are trying to send their kids to schools full of kids who overwhelmingly had parent's who taught them how to act. That is an issue. The government can give money and vouchers all day but you aren't going to produce good human beings until values are taught at home.

[tonygeorgia]

WHy is Atlanta less segregated than NYC, LA and Miami?

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Diversity is lower in most of Buckhead, South Dekalb, and West Atlanta.

It is luke warm in the more expensive middle class areas, like East Cobb, Milton Virginia Highland, Morningside, Druid Hills.

I'd be very surprised if Morningside, Virginia Highland or Druid Hills were more diverse than Buckhead and East Cobb.

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by tonygeorgia

WHy is Atlanta less segregated than NYC, LA and Miami?

I think it is a large mixture of things

-Removal of projects and usage of Section 8 vouchers

-Black social migration back to the south

-Fast growing city, so new areas don't have an existing social structure.

-Something about the way developers make suburban-esque apartments and as they age they become less desirable and rents are lower, opening up more room for people to cross economic barriers into an area.

-Large international immigration. 25% of Gwinnett residents were born outside the U.S. and it isn't just from Mexicans. There is a large diverse base of Asians. Atlanta isn't the largest attractor of international immigrants by far, but in the last decade it had the 2nd highest percentage point increase in attracting international immigrants (baltimore was 1st).

-Despite our problems, we are the city too busy to hate and the capitol of the civil rights movement. As imperfect as we are, we've done alot to confront problems.

-Increased interest in Gentrification to move back into well-located forgotten neighborhoods.

-I also wouldn't discount how spread out and decentralized our jobs are! Compared to most, we are a multi-nodal city, not a single-downtown oriented city with jobs. Our suburbs aren't just commuter neighborhoods. This means a county like Cobb or Gwinnett will have a more diverse socioeconomic mix, because of the job/commute marketplace is different than from how it was in the '80s.