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White flight wasn't just about race. My understanding is that the Garfield Park neighborhood south of downtown declined largely as a result of ramming I-65 through there. Similar story up in a lot of Chicago neighborhoods, as the Eisenhower and Kennedy expressways barreled through once-thriving residential areas. Interstate construction began as a safe, quick way to get out to the 'burbs, then ended up further destroying existing urban neighborhoods, dissecting residential areas and contributing to the growing blight.
Just ran across a post on St. Catherine of Siena Parish, which no longer exists. Garfield Park is still mostly a white neighborhood, but not exactly a great area. Flight to the suburbs and construction of I-65/I-465 near Shelby and Raymond massively altered the character of that part of Indy. Interesting to me, too, how the loss or deterioration of great buildings causes a neighborhood to slip even further. (There's a Family Video on this spot today.) I know that some of the historic churches in the old Polish district of Chicago have had to be braced up because of vibrations from the Kennedy Expressway.
"The 1960s brought marked change to St. Catherine of Siena... Hundreds of homes in the parish were purchased by the federal government for the construction of the new Interstate highway system. I-65 cut a north-south swath through St. Catherine’s parish about three blocks wide and about a mile long. I-465 also crossed the parish from east to west on the parish’s southern end. For nearly a decade, segments of the highway were under construction, causing detours and delays. I-465 was completed in 1970, and I-65 was completed in 1976. The I-65 portion of the freeway system was only a few hundred feet east of St. Catherine, and the Raymond Street interchange to access I-65 was only a few hundred feet north of St. Catherine.
"About 1,000 families belonged to St. Catherine of Siena Church at the height of its membership. With the building of the Interstate system, it became less convenient for those who lived on the other sides of the highways. Residential streets that formerly extended for blocks, or even miles, dead-ended. Children who formerly walked to school and parishioners who once walked to church could no longer do so with the Interstate dissecting the neighborhood. Around the same time, the migration of families from many urban neighborhoods to the suburbs had begun on all sides of Indianapolis."
Whites are not the only ones in this country with morals or family values and education.
That being said, nearly 80 percent of blacks are born out of wedlock and blacks suffer from lower education and income levels and are many times more likely than other races to be violent criminal offenders.
Historically, as areas have experienced white flight, this has led to increased crime.
Much of the declines of these neighborhoods are not solely attributable to race. Many of these neighborhoods particularly in industrial areas experience job losses and you have people leaving to seek employment in other areas. Ouse leaving are replaced with those with less positive job prospects and the cycle continues until you have once middle class areas become lower working class and then welfare class. Most of the west side and south side of Chicago experienced this fate though some of the areas closer to the loop job center are being reclaimed by gentrification.
It would behoove you to look at the in-migration of African American and out out-mgration of whites in northern cities (particularly the rust belt) during the period after WWII. Deindustrialization started its steep decline in the 1970s while after white flight which was clearly in the 50s and 60s. Until the late 70s manufacturing was King in the United States. By the 80s, finance, insurance, real estate, professional and business services replaced manufacturing jobs.
By white people moving out as soon as a black person moved in on their block. This created exclusively black, and therefore low-income neighborhoods. There was a self-fulfilling prophecy among many people during the "white flight era" that blacks lowered property values in their neighborhoods.
And this caused people, decades later, to not want to give statements to police or prosecutors about crimes they witnessed?
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Originally Posted by Dyadic
Are you saying only Whites have decent moral values and are educated, family oriented people?
That is all really subjective. I will say historically, whites tended to have more and/or better education (for various reasons), historically aligned their family structure to Christian principles even if things were all that great in the family, which I believe helped create stability within a majority of the white family population. However, things are rapidly evolving, and who knows what the future holds. Having an out-of-wedlock birth rate of 70% in the black community in a country where the "American Dream" takes two decent enough incomes has really caused issues within that subset of the population. I see more and more others heading in that direction though, and I wonder what it will mean for the country decades in the future. I think there were plenty of affairs, out-of-wedlock conceptions, etc. within the white community, but even with a spike in divorces, still having two stable working parents has helped.
I think the morals and values that will drive people away have more to do with minor and major criminal acts, anything from littering, to graffiti, to drug dealing and prostituting girls. If a group engages in that behavior directly, or indirectly accepts that behavior (OK taking 'gifts' from relative who you know is dealing, stealing, etc.), then that will likely cause others to want to get away from that lifestyle. Additionally, if a group is more accepting of things like teenage pregnancy and child rearing done mostly or all by the mother, others might not care to live in such a culture given that historically that was almost always going to be a hard life to live. People want to protect their families, from being crime victims or victims of hanging around the "wrong crowd" and making life choices that will have a serious negative impact on their future. Again, that is subjective to each individual person.
Say what you will about the area lacking amenities, things are changing over here. Who knows if it will someday progress to the point that the area is a hot address in Indianapolis. I don't have a crystal ball and neither do you. However, 2500 East Michigan St is in an area in which positive things are happening, and not just in Woodruff Place.
I haven't been on here in a while, but when I'm wrong about something, I'll 'fess up to it. I haven't spent as much time in that area as I should apparently and I'm glad to see that there is some investment trickling into the area.
That aside, however, the bigger point that there is plenty of land/housing available and that gentrification hasn't led to appreciable displacement still stands. FWIW, I looked at census data from 2000 to the latest ACS series (2013 3-year) and it's interesting to note that the number of households in poverty is actually up in Center Township. If displacement was occurring, we'd see the exact opposite.
That aside, however, the bigger point that there is plenty of land/housing available and that gentrification hasn't led to appreciable displacement still stands. FWIW, I looked at census data from 2000 to the latest ACS series (2013 3-year) and it's interesting to note that the number of households in poverty is actually up in Center Township. If displacement was occurring, we'd see the exact opposite.
Maybe, maybe not. Say there were 100K in Center Township and the data prior showed that 50K were in poverty. Over x number of years there is a small building boom in a former trashy area and it has pushed all the poor out. If the poor stay in Center Township, is that gentrification? Or is gentrification based on township boundaries, county boundaries, etc? Also, the number of households in poverty could easily be those that weren't in poverty in the past but now are in poverty. I don't see how gentrification of one specific area, consisting of a few city blocks and a few streets, could cause the entire townships to be gentrified.
Maybe, maybe not. Say there were 100K in Center Township and the data prior showed that 50K were in poverty. Over x number of years there is a small building boom in a former trashy area and it has pushed all the poor out. If the poor stay in Center Township, is that gentrification? Or is gentrification based on township boundaries, county boundaries, etc? Also, the number of households in poverty could easily be those that weren't in poverty in the past but now are in poverty. I don't see how gentrification of one specific area, consisting of a few city blocks and a few streets, could cause the entire townships to be gentrified.
It's definitely more nuanced, but we can look at the movement of poor coming from one of three sources:
1) They choose to move. This happens a lot. Poor don't tend to stay in one residence for a long period of time, nor do they tend to stay in one neighborhood for a long period with or without displacement pressure. The type of jobs for which the poor are qualified are increasingly dispersed and more difficult to find near downtown (think basic retail like gas station clerk, warehouse worker, etc). As more solidly working class people move further out, they poor have more opportunities to live 4-5 miles out in 50s-60s style ranch homes and many prefer this. Example: west of the white river near downtown, the number of adults who did not graduate HS/get a GED has dropped 25-30% in roughly 12 years. There has been zero displacement. People are moving because they're chasing better homes and jobs. Not coincidentally, the census tracts with the highest growth in people without HS/GEDs also tend to have the highest growth in the number of people with college and advanced degrees. The less qualified are chasing line cook jobs at the new McDonalds or White Castle in areas that are developing.
2) Urban revitalization (50s-early 80s style). The government comes in, declares eminent domain, and basically clearcuts a neighborhood, like they did when building IUPUI and freeways. The effect is the same as gentrification, but the mechanism is quite different (top down). Gentrification, as it was originally defined in London and NYC (and is still predominantly defined) focuses more on individuals making the choice to invest and displace rather than massive govt projects that remove people en masse.
3) Gentrification. Private investors come in, rehab, invest, drive rents and values up, and drive poor out.
Simply saying people are getting displaced isn't adequate though, because displacement in and of itself may or may not be particularly traumatic and it needs to be weighed against the benefits of investment. People come in, rehab, commercial picks up, crime drops, more outsiders come in, tax revenues increase, and the city as a whole benefits. That needs to be weighed against the cost (displacement of poor, and in the most severe cases, the working class and even middle class). They aren't entirely mutually exclusive, but you can't typically have reinvestment without some degree of displacement.
Severity/displacement trauma is really a function of the rate people get pushed out (number over a given time) and where they end up settling afterwards. If I'm poor and I move every year or so and continually hop around the near east, south, west, and north sides in various areas, and I'm pushed out of a few blocks where rent goes up, that's not much of a trauma, relatively speaking, provided this doesn't push people too far from their primary chance at employment, which isn't the case if we're talking a few blocks. That's where looking at Center Township comes in. It's not that big of an area and chances are if it can maintain its #s for people who have lower income and are less educated, then those people aren't suffering from job dislocation issues.
The census numbers at the tract level bear this out. Ignore poverty for a moment, because poverty went up everywhere from 2000 to 2012 due to the economy. Focus on adults without HS degrees/GEDs. Taking a look at the tracts where gentrification is most intense (Downtown, Near North, Woodruff/Fletcher/Holy Rosary/Fountain), the decline in adults without education has dropped a lot (about 45%), but not that much more than other areas where people are leaving naturally without gentrification. The decline over those non-gentrifying areas is the displacement factor. That rate is 1 in 10 total adults over a 12 year period. That's basically 1 in 115 adults in a neighborhood getting "pushed out" per year, and if they're able to easily find accommodation in their price range elsewhere in Center Township, that's a really, really low level of trauma vs. the benefit of the improvements we are seeing in DT. BTW, the numbers of people in those gentrifying areas with only HS degrees (not even some college) has actually gone up.
Where gentrification gets a deserved bad name is in places with huge housing demands and prices. As an example: my old neighborhood in Chicago started at a point where it had 80% of the household income and the same college/grad school rate of the neighborhoods around Garfield Park in 1990. In 20 years it now has the same/slightly more income than Carmel (going from 30K to 110K in constant dollars...with the last point in the middle off the recession). Its rate of BA/grad educated adults jumped from about 9% to 75-80%...or 15-20 pts higher than Carmel. In 20 years, it wiped out the poor and the working class. Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon all around that city and it's even more dramatic in places like SF, DC, Boston, NYC. That is a huge problem. It's happening in so many areas so quickly that people are getting pushed out of reasonable commute distances for job opportunities.
I'm not arguing that gentrification isn't occurring in Indy. It is in a slower manner. What I'm arguing is that the negative issues related to displacement aren't significant and it's not an issue...and likely won't be 20 years down the road either. The price (a bit of marginal displacement) in no way measure against the benefits (investment and a much-improved environment and tax base around downtown.
And this caused people, decades later, to not want to give statements to police or prosecutors about crimes they witnessed?
That is all really subjective. I will say historically, whites tended to have more and/or better education (for various reasons), historically aligned their family structure to Christian principles even if things were all that great in the family, which I believe helped create stability within a majority of the white family population. However, things are rapidly evolving, and who knows what the future holds. Having an out-of-wedlock birth rate of 70% in the black community in a country where the "American Dream" takes two decent enough incomes has really caused issues within that subset of the population. I see more and more others heading in that direction though, and I wonder what it will mean for the country decades in the future. I think there were plenty of affairs, out-of-wedlock conceptions, etc. within the white community, but even with a spike in divorces, still having two stable working parents has helped.
I think the morals and values that will drive people away have more to do with minor and major criminal acts, anything from littering, to graffiti, to drug dealing and prostituting girls. If a group engages in that behavior directly, or indirectly accepts that behavior (OK taking 'gifts' from relative who you know is dealing, stealing, etc.), then that will likely cause others to want to get away from that lifestyle. Additionally, if a group is more accepting of things like teenage pregnancy and child rearing done mostly or all by the mother, others might not care to live in such a culture given that historically that was almost always going to be a hard life to live. People want to protect their families, from being crime victims or victims of hanging around the "wrong crowd" and making life choices that will have a serious negative impact on their future. Again, that is subjective to each individual person.
Indiana has a lot of racism especially towards black people when we look at the past to the present. This city hasn't become culturally diverse until the last 20 years. Before that is was primarily only black and white. I live in the southside and I see confederate flags almost weekly. The remnants of that oppression still remain here. Blacks get the worst schools and often live in the worst neighborhoods. You don't state what those various reasons are for better education.
Apart from overt racism you see in areas like beech grove how is this any different than in other areas nationwide? Admittedly, there is not as much mixing of black and white neighborhoods like we see in Chicago, where we often see Hispanic neighborhoods serve as buffers between welfare class black neighborhoods and working class white neighborhoods (ie humboldt park).
Nationwide, low income black neighborhoods have the worst schools, even when you account for income and education.
Carmel, Zionsville, Fishers and Noblesville are where many professionals choose to live but are some of least racially diverse areas I have ever seen (apart from the north shore in Chicago where my wife has been mistaken as a maid). My Mexican wife also noted the total lack of diversity among shoppers at Keystone at the Crossing and Carmel (except for the minorities working in the stores).
I see more race mixing in neighborhoods in Indy (not suburbs) than I do in Chicago.
Yep. I'm not a Republican, but what amazes me is that so many cities that vote Democrat are as effectively segregated as they are.
Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Gary.... all heavily Democratic cities with generations of liberal government -- and all still effectively segregated when you really get down to it.
Why Indianapolis, a former stronghold of the KKK, has less racial tension than Chicago and St. Louis, I'm not sure I fully understand. I was going to say because gentrification is not a huge deal here, but it's not a huge deal in Detroit and STL. One of the cities that bothers me the most when you look at growing racial tension and gentrification is San Francisco, which is as liberal as they come.
Interesting, too, that a lot of towns and cities where racial tension is at its highest often have very little voter participation. I read somewhere that 12% of people in Ferguson, Missouri, voted in the last municipal elections. That includes everyone in Ferguson. I'm sure that percentage is way lower among African Americans there. If the police force being overwhelmingly white is a problem, that's something that can be solved by voter pressure.
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Black neighborhoods and schools
