Are We Asking the Wrong Question about Where Gentrification Happens?

For the most part, when we discuss gentrification we talk about neighborhoods.  Neighborhood X got a yoga studio, or Neighborhood Y got a new Whole Foods.  If multiple neighborhoods gentrify at the same time, we might also talk about its affects on the city as a whole.  But, the city line is usually the spatial perimeter that bounds our discussion. 

But, what if we are asking the wrong question?  What if gentrification is actually a process that affects the nation as a whole, creating gentrifying cities and disinvested cities instead of  gentrifying neighborhoods and disinvested ones?  

At this point, you might be thinking--"What you talkin' about Willis?"  

Well, according to a new study by Rebecca Diamond highlighted on the Washington Post's wonkblog, that is what is happening.  The dual affects we often associate with gentrification--investment in some areas and disinvestment in others--are are national in scope.  To use a locally inspired metaphor, some cities are like Logan Circle while others are like Langley Park. 

Instead of income, however, Diamond uses education to measure gentrification on the national scale, with the key metric being college degrees.

Turns out,  people with college degrees tend to flock to places where there are lots of other college grads.  Over time, you get a sort of path dependency.  A city manages to attract college grads, which in turn attracts more college grads.  This trend also puts upward pressure on salaries, which in turn drive an increase in restaurants, museums, and other cultural fare. Streets get safer too. San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC are good examples of this trend.  In the early 1990s, for example, DC recorded over 400 murders.  Last year, it recorded 103, even though the city is much larger today. 

On the flip side, places that don't attract college grads see their relative, and in some cases real status decline.  Their wages are lower and they have fewer amenities.  Crime takes a turn for the worse.  Toledo, Detroit, and Baton Rouge are good examples.


I think Diamond's work is fascinating (if ultimately depressing).  It means Americans are becoming even more segregated (in this case along class lines).   

But, none of this means local-scale gentrification will go away anytime soon.  It is easy to look at 14th Street in DC and see the DMV as a booming metropolis full of good jobs, good eats, plentiful entertainment, and safe streets.  But, someone still has to work in the low wage jobs that clean the office buildings where those good jobs are located, bus the tables at the fancy see-and-be-seen restaurants, wash the beer glasses recycled many times over in hipster bars, and police the drunks that come out of them at night.  Low wage workers aren't teleported in for the job.  They live in the DMV too, and the growing gap between their salaries and those of the folks noshing at Le Diplomate continue to leave its mark.

If you want to see how this plays out in your own world, ask the person who cleans your office building where she lives the next time you get the chance.  Chances are she lives in a suburban, and quite likely exurban location.  By the way, when I asked this question at my workplace, the answer was Gaithersburg.          

Some Love for the Purple Line

The Purple Line is one step closer to becoming reality after Wednesday's announcement that the Federal Transit Administration had included the Purple Line on a list of 7 projects slated for "new starts" grants. 

Although the state has been lining up private money for the project, few people believe private money will materialize without federal backing.  In that regard, Wednesday's news can be viewed as an insurance policy of sorts--private money is now more likely and with it so is the purple line.     

Here's the most recent map of the proposed route. 

Of late the coverage about the purple line has focused on its opponents (e.g. the Town of Chevy Chase).  As with any big public works project, though, the goal is to benefit far more people than you disadvantage.  So, what are the benefits of a Purple Line?  Here are two that come to (my) mind:  

1.  The purple line will update the metro system's hub and spoke design.  A hub and spoke network is basically designed to move people from suburb to city (and vice versa).  People that want to go from suburb to suburb don't tend to get much benefit from a hub and spoke system because the spokes only connect through the hub.  If I want to take the metro to go from Silver Spring to Bethesda, for example, I have to go through DC and then back out again.  The distance by road is about 5 miles.  By train it's around 15 miles.  The purple line will provide people going between Maryland's DMV suburbs with another, faster public transportation option.  

2.  Transit beckons development.  Urban planners love something called 'smart growth,' which in the DMV usually translates into building at higher density around transit points.  And, since the fashion these days is the 'mixed use development,' the transit stations along the purple line could see a boost in housing and retail options.  This trend won't have a huge affect in a place like Bethesda, which is already well developed, but stops on the eastern half of the line, where development has been anemic, could really benefit.   

There are, of course, potential downsides.  And, it is worth considering those not normally considered in the papers (i.e. let's stop worrying about those poor wretches with the best legal representation money can buythe Town of Chevy Chase for a minute and think about who else might see less love than pain from the purple line)

1.  The working class Hispanic population.  Let me start with some context.  Most of the transit stops along the proposed purple line are in areas geographers and urban studies types call 'first suburbs.'  The Brookings Institution defines first suburbs with two criteria--they were built before 1950 and are located in counties adjacent to the main city.  In DC this usually means suburbs inside (or touching the beltway).  First suburbs are a study in contradiction.  Some of their neighborhoods are quite posh (Bethesda).  But, some have experienced significant disinvestment (Langley Park).  This is especially true as you move east along the proposed purple line.  This wealth gradient means that housing in MoCo's eastern suburbs and PG county's western suburbs has become an affordable oasis in a metro area where housing prices are ridiculous (see my earlier post on this topic here).  Big stretches of University Boulevard, for example, now have large immigrant populations from Central America.  The area around 'Tick Tock' Liquor store is a veritable little El Salvador.  There are also some amazing Asian and African places tucked in between the pupersaries and Peruvian chicken places.  The boom of immigrants to these areas has made them culturally vibrant places.  Developers coming into these neighborhoods may appreciate this 'diversity' as a selling point, but they probably won't build new houses or apartments for the working class Hispanics already living in the area.  Instead, they'll do what developers in DC have done--aim for the luxury market.  And, that will mean gentrification and displacement.