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The challenge going forward for the city seems to be were will the poor people go? With the downtown neighborhoods getting prohibitively more expensive as more affluent white people move downtown. Near downtown neighborhoods like Holy Cross, Woodruff, Fountain Square under massive gentrification, Mostly poorer Blacks are being moved into ever smaller areas like Warren Township, Lawrence and the other once mostly white Old suburbs. The outer ring suburbs are prohibitively expensive as well.
If we look at crime and race in this city , Blacks are being forced out of the downtown by economic circumstance and violent crime is high in very limited areas, to the point now that there are now some areas of the city, I would frankly avoid even driving through .
So we really are becoming two cities or three actually, Indy downtown ,( an affluent enclave), the old suburbs (a high crime area), surrounded by suburbs (another affluent enclave). Both the downtown and suburbs are growing and expanding so the big problem is where will the poor go?
The challenge going forward for the city seems to be were will the poor people go? With the downtown neighborhoods getting prohibitively more expensive as more affluent white people move downtown. Near downtown neighborhoods like Holy Cross, Woodruff, Fountain Square under massive gentrification, Mostly poorer Blacks are being moved into ever smaller areas like Warren Township, Lawrence and the other once mostly white Old suburbs. The outer ring suburbs are prohibitively expensive as well.
If we look at crime and race in this city , Blacks are being forced out of the downtown by economic circumstance and violent crime is high in very limited areas, to the point now that there are now some areas of the city, I would frankly avoid even driving through .
So we really are becoming two cities or three actually, Indy downtown ,( an affluent enclave), the old suburbs (a high crime area), surrounded by suburbs (another affluent enclave). Both the downtown and suburbs are growing and expanding so the big problem is where will the poor go?
I don't have an answer for that.
Subsidized housing is the answer for that. More mixed income buildings, like the new ones surrounding Barton Tower on Mass Ave, need to be built.
Bill Bishop's comments on the self-segregation of America since the 60's are still hugely, hugely relevant. Bishop talks more about the impact of voluntary cultural segregation on politics (especially since the 2008 presidential campaign), but there's obviously a major racial component to the new American demographics, as well. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether it's truly about "race" as much as about cultural preferences skewing our demographics unfavorably. As significant as racial divisions are, let's not forget the "Big Sort" that's going on among white folks in particular, as people choose like-minded communities to live in. Boiling it all down to race sure does seem simplistic.
The challenge going forward for the city seems to be were will the poor people go? With the downtown neighborhoods getting prohibitively more expensive as more affluent white people move downtown. Near downtown neighborhoods like Holy Cross, Woodruff, Fountain Square under massive gentrification, Mostly poorer Blacks are being moved into ever smaller areas like Warren Township, Lawrence and the other once mostly white Old suburbs. The outer ring suburbs are prohibitively expensive as well.
If we look at crime and race in this city , Blacks are being forced out of the downtown by economic circumstance and violent crime is high in very limited areas, to the point now that there are now some areas of the city, I would frankly avoid even driving through .
So we really are becoming two cities or three actually, Indy downtown ,( an affluent enclave), the old suburbs (a high crime area), surrounded by suburbs (another affluent enclave). Both the downtown and suburbs are growing and expanding so the big problem is where will the poor go?
I don't have an answer for that.
Where to relocated the poor and especially the poor Blacks has always been a huge problem. Take the Martindale-Brightwood area for example. Most railroad jobs left that area by 1944. The remaining railroad connections were moved by the New York Cenral to Avon in 1960. This was a detriment to the ecomonic status to the Martindale-Brightwood in the post war years. The lost of railroad resulted in White residents pouring into the newly built suburbs. The housing left behind was follwed by an in-migration of African Americans. Martindale become the Black center of small working class homes intermixed with manufacturing such as Ertel Manufacturing and the old Atlas Machine Works ground. The eventual construction of the I-65 and I70 interstate cut through large portions of Martindale-Brightwood and other small Black communities which resulted in displacing many residents from their neighborhoods. As a result of the east-west interstate and the displacement of the people in that community, the remainder of the old businesses in Brightwood, Station State vacated. By the mid 70s the Salvation Army store, pool hall, a pet store, Cohen Bros Department Store, several doctor's offices, accounting and bookkeeping services and an insurance company. Martindale was finally declared a poverty target area. It didn't start out as a high poverty, high crime area. The city played an instrumental role in turn it into a high crime area.
The challenge going forward for the city seems to be were will the poor people go? With the downtown neighborhoods getting prohibitively more expensive as more affluent white people move downtown. Near downtown neighborhoods like Holy Cross, Woodruff, Fountain Square under massive gentrification, Mostly poorer Blacks are being moved into ever smaller areas like Warren Township, Lawrence and the other once mostly white Old suburbs. The outer ring suburbs are prohibitively expensive as well.
If we look at crime and race in this city , Blacks are being forced out of the downtown by economic circumstance and violent crime is high in very limited areas, to the point now that there are now some areas of the city, I would frankly avoid even driving through .
So we really are becoming two cities or three actually, Indy downtown ,( an affluent enclave), the old suburbs (a high crime area), surrounded by suburbs (another affluent enclave). Both the downtown and suburbs are growing and expanding so the big problem is where will the poor go?
I don't have an answer for that.
People always worry about displacement from gentrification, but the truth is it's only an issue in about a dozen major markets in the country. Indy isn't one if them. Draw a circle around DT about 5-6 miles out and you'll see that the vast majority of the residential areas are by no means expensive or exclusionary. And gentrification isn't occurring quickly enough for that to be an issue anytime soon (as in decades off). Also, the type of housing present in most of this area isn't what one would consider to be "gentrifiable". A clapboard house that's 800-1400 sq feet 3 miles from DT isn't what people with money are after. It's a larger historic home, converted loft space, and condos. The bigger problem is sprawl. The more sprawl, the more dispersed job opportunities become, which leads to transportation issues for the poor. That and safety, but heavily poor areas are hardly ever "safe", no matter if they're 2 miles from DT or 9 miles from DT.
People always worry about displacement from gentrification, but the truth is it's only an issue in about a dozen major markets in the country. Indy isn't one if them. Draw a circle around DT about 5-6 miles out and you'll see that the vast majority of the residential areas are by no means expensive or exclusionary. And gentrification isn't occurring quickly enough for that to be an issue anytime soon (as in decades off). Also, the type of housing present in most of this area isn't what one would consider to be "gentrifiable". A clapboard house that's 800-1400 sq feet 3 miles from DT isn't what people with money are after. It's a larger historic home, converted loft space, and condos. The bigger problem is sprawl. The more sprawl, the more dispersed job opportunities become, which leads to transportation issues for the poor. That and safety, but heavily poor areas are hardly ever "safe", no matter if they're 2 miles from DT or 9 miles from DT.
The historical African American areas downtown, especially along Indiana Avenue, has gone through the gentrication process. That district once housed 33 restaurants, 33 saloons, 26 grocery stores and 17 barbershops and beauty salons. Today you see just a few examples of Italianate architecture standing along this the avenue. The specter of "urban renewal" and the Interstate 65 reared its ugly head. The highwa and the expansion of IUPUI cut away and destroyed significant African-American neighborhoods. Lockerfield Gardens was closed. Homes, schools, businesses and churches crumbled under wrecking balls and bulldozers. A community that put Indianapolis jazz on the map disappeared in just a few short years.
Last edited by Dyadic; 10-16-2014 at 04:02 PM..
Reason: mistake
The historical African American areas downtown, especially along Indiana Avenue, has gone through the gentrication process. That district once housed 33 restaurants, 33 saloons, 26 grocery stores and 17 barbershops and beauty salons. Today you see just a few examples of Italianate architecture standing along this the avenue. The specter of "urban renewal" and the Interstate 65 reared its ugly head. The highwa and the expansion of IUPUI cut away and destroyed significant African-American neighborhoods. Lockerfield Gardens was closed. Homes, schools, businesses and churches crumbled under wrecking balls and bulldozers. A community that put Indianapolis jazz on the map disappeared in just a few short years.
This is all true, but this has nothing to do with gentrification. This is all about poor policy at the federal, state, and local level in the name if "urban renewal" from the 50s through the 80s: highways, blighting procedures, tearing things down, unfavorable FHA and HOLC policies that made it nearly impossible to invest in older urban residences, etc. again, this has nothing to do with rehabbing and investing and organically building up an area today via gentrification.
This is all true, but this has nothing to do with gentrification. This is all about poor policy at the federal, state, and local level in the name if "urban renewal" from the 50s through the 80s: highways, blighting procedures, tearing things down, unfavorable FHA and HOLC policies that made it nearly impossible to invest in older urban residences, etc. again, this has nothing to do with rehabbing and investing and organically building up an area today via gentrification.
Gentification by definition is the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into an area that often displaces poorer residents. That is exactly want happened to Indiana Avenue. Unfavorable FHA and HOLC policies had nothing to do with it. The Indianapolis African American community had zero political muscle.
The absence of ministers from the ranks of the activists and an NAACP branch that was for the most part ineffective. The Urban League did not even have an Indianapolis chapter until 1965. Other national civil rights groups did establish a base in the city during the late 1960s and 1970s, but there was never a "Movement" that embraced and inspired the entire black community. Indianapolis blacks did not take to the streets, even in the 1960s, and their leaders preferred consultation with white leaders to confrontation. The results of this strategy were mixed, at best. As a result, whites were able to offer token concessions without sharing power. This imbalance was most noticeably evident in the successful attempt to expand the municipal borders of the city in 1969.
Unified Government, or "Unigov," as it came to be known, was a complicated merger of city and country government functions. It was the brainchild of young Republican mayor Richard Lugar who, aware that city and county administrative offices often had overlapping jurisdiction and duplication of services, set out to combine all policymaking structures of the city and the county, with the exception of police and fire departments and, most notably, the school system. Many blacks and Democrats saw Unigov as a Republican attempt to secure suburban, largely white Republican voters while purposely diluting the political clout of African-American votes. In 1960 blacks constituted about 27 percent of the city's population, and demographers projected this would rise to 30 to 40 percent by 1970. It was clear that many northern cities would soon have black mayors, and with a strong black presence on the city councils. After Unigov, the incorporation of the largely white suburbs reduced the black presence in the city to 18 percent, and insured Republican control of Indianapolis for the next generation. Moreover, the failure to incorporate the township schools into the city system freed white suburbanites from supporting the inner city schools, thereby perpetuating racial inequities in education that have only increased as the years have passed.
African Americans were ill-equipped to challenge the Republican move to preserve white political supremacy in Indianapolis. There was no umbrella organization in the black community to counteract Lugar's organized campaign. Instead of uniting a city and county, Unigov widened the gulf between the African American and white communities. Masterfully orchestrated by Lugar, the Unigov campaign demonstrated how politically impotent the black community was and how removed their leaders were from the halls of power. Today blacks are more visible in Indianapolis politics than before. Despite becoming more visible in racial politics over the past 35 years very little has actually changed in Indianapolis Whether it is schools, housing, or economic opportunity, Indianapolis's black population lags behind the white majority. In opting for civility instead of militant protest, black leaders in the twentieth century confused peace with progress, and left a political vacuum in the African-American community yet to be filled.
Gentification by definition is the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into an area that often displaces poorer residents. That is exactly want happened to Indiana Avenue. Unfavorable FHA and HOLC policies had nothing to do with it. The Indianapolis African American community had zero political muscle.
No. That is not what happened, because there was no influx of middle class or affluent people in the area. The process of gentrification and old school urban renewal are entirely different. Urban renewal strategies of the post War period through the late 70s/early 80s are entirely different from gentrification. Urban renewal of that period is predicated upon a few things:
1) white middle class departure of the urban core thanks to freeways, which leads to a general state of disinvestment in the inner neighborhoods.
2) FHA and HOLC policies that favored the development of new, suburban style detached housing at the periphery of development in Marion County, which received a grade of "A" under the HOLC system. This meant that the most mobile and affluent received preferential financing at a rate even disproportionate to the risk of those mortgages. Older urban white neighborhoods generally received a rating of "C" (poor) and older urban black neighborhoods received a rating of "D", which essentially meant "don't even bother issuing loans here". These areas were designated in red, hence the term red-lining. The only way to finance home purchases was through cash or sweat equity rehabbing, which ties up resources that otherwise could have been diverted toward inward investment within these communities. In other words, the policy handicapped their economic progress even more than marginalization based upon skin color could.
3) Legislation around that period believed that the only way to rehabilitate the inner cities was through "slum clearance". Examples: Federal Housing Act of 1949 (slum eradication), Federal Housing Act of 1954 (provision for public housing as part of slum clearance). This gave local authorities the legal authority to draft statutes that used eminent domain to clear land in the name of "slum clearance". Indianapolis had their versions of this, as did just about every city in the country. This occurred whether the NAACP had a major presence or not, whether there was massive upheaval in race riots or protests or not everywhere in older urban centers. For example: Detroit, Chicago, and NYC had massive an entrenched Black leadership. They clearly weren't as powerful as the political establishment, but there was no leadership vacuum This form of slum clearance/urban renewal happened in all of those cities.
With the "tools" in place, Indianapolis, like other cities, went about the process of taking land via eminent domain in the name of supposed "slum clearance" where IUPUI now sits. This land wasn't intended for middle class or rich people. It wasn't cleared so they could move there (which might be considered gentrification). At the time, the city didn't even know what to do with the land. They just wanted the "slum" gone. This destroyed much of the fabric of the black cultural and economic center of the city on Indiana Ave and resulted in massive displacement to other parts of the inner core of the city. They did the same as the near northside became more disinvested through buying back parels, taking them off the tax rolls, and banking them.
The problem with this form of renewal is that it did not recognize that despite the fact the area might not be considered to be traditionally affluent, the "slum" was in fact a commercially vibrant and economically diversified area and the center of a stabilizing force in the Black community. It was a case where people were extremely resourceful and the community was forced to be entirely self-reliant (thanks to segregation, racism, and lack of outside capital). Organic relationships and interactions emerged that made the community "greater than the sum of its parts". This type of "clearance" and neglect for these organic interactions that make all the difference in a community and neighborhood are what Jane Jacobs railed against. These clearance strategies (and continued dispersion of middle class whites) set off a chain reaction when it destabilized the black community. This is all generated from awful policy that no longer exists.
Gentrification is precisely the opposite. Rather than saying these places aren't worth saving and should therefore be leveled, what you have with gentrification is that people of means actually value the neighborhood and want to live there for its historic characteristics, housing attributes, walkability, or proximity to downtown (as examples). It's not a top-down approach where a city levels entire city blocks or buys up parcels to put them in a land bank for some future use. It's an informal approach where people "buy in" to a neighborhood by through ownership or rental of existing property, construction of new stores, restaurants, services, etc. People are moving someplace that based upon economics might not be considered to be particularly valuable by people behind urban renewal in prior decades. It's a pro rather than anti-Jane Jacobs argument.
So people trickle in bit by bit and invest. It takes a long time to see a massive shift in a city like Indianapolis, which is quite different than bulldozing an area over a period of weeks. Nobody is gentrifying the 2500 block of E Michigan St (for example). Nobody is gentrifying Haughville. There is a ton of housing that no massive groups of gentrifiers will touch in our lifetimes that is quite close to the city center. Displacement isn't an issue.
Nobody is gentrifying the 2500 block of E Michigan St (for example).
There is a ton of housing that no massive groups of gentrifiers will touch in our lifetimes that is quite close to the city center. Displacement isn't an issue.
Interesting commentary, considering 2500 E Michigan is on the fringe of St Clair Place and just blocks from Woodruff Place.
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