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Another (big) study confirms it: Philly is one of most segregated regions
Philly and our suburbs experienced the biggest increase in income segregation of any metro region, The same, however, is pretty much true nationwide: rich people are increasingly likely to live in rich neighborhoods, the poor evermore likely to live in poor neighborhoods.
Another (big) study confirms it: Philly is one of most segregated regions
Philadelphia and our suburbs experienced the biggest increase in income segregation of any metro region in the country, according to a study released today by Stanford University, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Brown University. The same, however, is pretty much true nationwide: rich people are increasingly likely to live in rich neighborhoods, the poor evermore likely to live in poor neighborhoods.
The middle class? You can find them in The Onion’s National Museum of the Middle Class, “featuring historical and anthropological exhibits addressing the socioeconomic category that once existed between the upper and lower classes.”
Not that things were pretty during the halcyon days of the 1950s — but they are getting much, much worse now. As I’ve written about (somewhat obsessively), Philadelphia’s rich are retreating into ever more exclusive highway-bound exurbs further and further away (same elsewhere too), while old post-war middle-class suburbs follow their urban counterparts into disinvestment and decline. And since black and Latino people are much more likely to be poor — and thanks to a post-World War II history of the government subsidizing white peoples' resettlement to racially exclusive 'burbs while intentionally concentrating black people in the 'hood — Philly and many other metros are also severely segregated by race. Oh, and our region’s schools are the nation’s most separate and unequal — take that Brown v. Board!
Today’s New York Times article on the study profiles Germantown, in Northwest Philly:
"The map of that change for Philadelphia is a red stripe of wealthy suburbs curving around a poor, blue urban center, broken by a few red dots of gentrification. It is the picture of the economic change that slammed into Philadelphia decades ago as its industrial base declined and left a shrunken middle class and a poorer urban core.
The Germantown neighborhood, once solidly middle class, is now mostly low income. Chelten Avenue, one of its main thoroughfares, is a hard-luck strip of check-cashing stores and takeout restaurants. The stone homes on side streets speak to a more affluent past, one that William Wilson, 95, a longtime resident, remembers fondly.
“It was real nice,” he said, shuffling along Chelten Avenue on Monday. Theaters thrived on the avenue, he said, as did a fancy department store. Now a Walgreens stands in its place. “Everything started going down in the dumps,” he said.
Philadelphia’s more recent history is one of gentrifying neighborhoods, like the Northern Liberties area, where affluence has rushed in, in the form of espresso shops, glass-walled apartments and a fancy supermarket, and prosperous new suburbs that have mushroomed in the far north and south of the metro area."
Check out some nice (by which I mean sad but well-crafted) graphics here. Occupy Wall Street has focused the nation’s attention on growing economic inequality. Segregation by race and class matters too.
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