How many cities had neighbourhoods with white flight see population increases? (US)

[memph]

Like in Detroit?


1960s white flight map.

Blue shows census tracts where the white % decreased by 20 percentage points* or more (black % correspondingly increased).


1960s population change map.




1970s, white flight areas were more like stable or at most slightly growing, while the rest of the city was losing population. Blue is where white flight is mostly tied to an increase in the black %, yellow is tied to an increase in the hispanic % (and red for Asian and green for other).



1980s white flight neighbourhoods growing again.



1990s



http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...n-detroit.html
http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...etroit-by.html

*for example if a census tract goes from 90% white to 70% white, or 30% white to 10% white, that's a decrease of 20 percentage points. If it goes from 20% white to 10% white, that's a decrease of 10 percentage points even though the white population might have decreased by 50% (10/20*100%).

[memph]

I suspect this mostly had to do with increases in household sizes in census tracts experiencing white flight, just like we see today in many neighbourhoods of cities with growing hispanic populations.

My theory is that what happened was that white flight from more outlying neighbourhoods caused blacks to move from the older ghettos to the neighbourhoods experiencing white flight, causing those older ghettos to lose population. If so, you could argue white flight still caused population loss in the city, just not in the neighbourhoods in which it was occurring.

Question now is did other cities experience similar patterns?

[James Bond Agent 007]

A couple maps I recently made for Jackson County MO (Kansas City). For reference, downtown KC is at the top-left.

First is a map showing numeric changes in the black population from 2000-2010 in (most of) Jackson County (KCMO) from 2000-2010, by census tract. Blue numbers over each tract indicate the actual net gain or loss (sorry they're a bit hard to read).

Notice they're abandoning the old core areas and moving out to the eastern and southern suburbs. Very stark geographic pattern.



Next is the same for the white population. To various degrees, they're leaving the areas in the inner suburbs the blacks are moving into ... but also notice the very small numbers moving into the inner city areas that the blacks are leaving (the very light yellow). This is what the very early stages of inner-city gentrification look like. It'll be interesting to see what happens in another 10-20 years.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by memph

I suspect this mostly had to do with increases in household sizes in census tracts experiencing white flight, just like we see today in many neighbourhoods of cities with growing hispanic populations.

My theory is that what happened was that white flight from more outlying neighbourhoods caused blacks to move from the older ghettos to the neighbourhoods experiencing white flight, causing those older ghettos to lose population. If so, you could argue white flight still caused population loss in the city, just not in the neighbourhoods in which it was occurring.

Question now is did other cities experience similar patterns?

Your theory is almost right. Though don't forget that downtown and nearby ghettos were also populated with other immigrants who would be classified as white.


http://detroitography.com/2013/11/15...ion-1940-1970/

For example, notice that Jews seem to move faster and farther out. By 1940, Jews had already made it to 8 Mile while blacks were still pretty limited to downtown.


http://detroitography.com/2014/06/30...oit-1840-1965/

You could pretty much infer that white-flight almost began just as soon as Detroit reached prosperity through its industrial revolution. I don't think it was so much a change in household sizes as it was extreme housing segregation and racist practices. Banks wouldn't lend to homeowners that lived in an area with any number of blacks which made it hard for whites to stay in one area even if that particular white family was not racist themselves.

I'd suspect many other Midwestern and possibly Los Angeles might have gone through a similar pattern.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by memph

I suspect this mostly had to do with increases in household sizes in census tracts experiencing white flight, just like we see today in many neighbourhoods of cities with growing hispanic populations.

Indeed. Two related things may also have played a role - if not in Detroit than elsewhere.

1. Larger houses were often subdivided into houses in this era.
2. In some cases large, high-density housing projects were built.

[memph]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

Your theory is almost right. Though don't forget that downtown and nearby ghettos were also populated with other immigrants who would be classified as white.


http://detroitography.com/2013/11/15...ion-1940-1970/

For example, notice that Jews seem to move faster and farther out. By 1940, Jews had already made it to 8 Mile while blacks were still pretty limited to downtown.


http://detroitography.com/2014/06/30...oit-1840-1965/

You could pretty much infer that white-flight almost began just as soon as Detroit reached prosperity through its industrial revolution. I don't think it was so much a change in household sizes as it was extreme housing segregation and racist practices. Banks wouldn't lend to homeowners that lived in an area with any number of blacks which made it hard for whites to stay in one area even if that particular white family was not racist themselves.

I'd suspect many other Midwestern and possibly Los Angeles might have gone through a similar pattern.

I'm not too sure what you're trying to argue.

My argument is basically you had a few different rings in which different things were happening, and those rings have been expanding outwards with time.

The outermost ring saw new housing development, which was happening in the outlying parts of Detroit in the 40s and 50s and maybe a little bit in the 60s, but since then has shifted into the suburbs.

Then there's a ring where housing unit counts are relatively stable, and where it's still predominantly white, but population was decreasing due to household size decreases.

Then there's the "white flight" ring, which was probably mostly in the inner core in the 40s, and then expanded into Dexter-Linwood in the 50s, and across Livernois in the 60s. Occupied housing units probably didn't really decline yet, but blacks typically had larger household sizes so population often increased a little as this was happening. As for why white flight was happening, some of it could be racism from the residents, some could be the bank loan issue, and maybe you also had residents who realized that problems with bank lending would cause neighbourhoods to decline once blacks started moving in and tried to leave before that happened.

Finally there's the older ghettos, places which were maybe already predominantly black for a couple decades, and where the difficulty in getting loans, low property values, etc caused the neighbourhoods to be in pretty bad shape, so few people moved into them and the blacks living there moved out as soon as they could, and this is where the greatest population declines occurred.

It's true though that I'm generalizing somewhat, there were neighbourhoods in the inner core that weren't predominantly black like Downtown, Cass Corridor and SW Detroit. Some of those still experienced population loss and it would be interesting to know what was happening in those, was it mostly urban renewal and household size changes or was there ever significant abandonment?


And yes, similar things were happening in many midwestern cities, some northeastern cities, and even some sunbelt cities. You had neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta for example where the racial makeup changed just as fast as in Detroit in the 60s and 70s.

[memph]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Indeed. Two related things may also have played a role - if not in Detroit than elsewhere.

1. Larger houses were often subdivided into houses in this era.
2. In some cases large, high-density housing projects were built.

I'm honestly not sure either of those apply too much in Detroit post-1940. Generally you had the number of housing units stay the same (or decline) in the more mature neighbourhoods. If subdivision of bigger houses into multiple units was happening much I'm pretty sure that would have show up as an increase in housing units rather than increase in household size. You did have housing projects but I'm not sure if any of them were more dense than what they replaced.

In other cities subdivision of units might have happened though, I don't know. Another thing I've noticed in Los Angeles is that many of the Hispanic neighbourhoods have a lot of backyard cottages, although I'm not sure when those were built.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Indeed. Two related things may also have played a role - if not in Detroit than elsewhere.

1. Larger houses were often subdivided into houses in this era.
2. In some cases large, high-density housing projects were built.

Yes on #1 but almost certainly no on #2.

Public housing projects, at least in the U.S., are almost always lower density, and with fewer units, than the previous residential fabric. In the case of Detroit, there was almost no public housing built anyways.

[Crawford]

That Jewish map is a little off for Detroit, BTW. It isn't really accurate.

Jews were firmly settled in Detroit until the 1960's. Mumford High, in NW Detroit, was majority Jewish still in the mid-60's. It wasn't until the 1967 riots that all hell broke loose and Jews left the city.

The suburbs didn't really dominate Jewish life in Metro Detroit until about 1970 or so. Maybe the map is trying to identity when the first Jews moved to a neighborhood, rather than when that neighorhood became the dominant Jewish neighborhood.

West Bloomfield, BTW, didn't become the Jewish neighborhood until the 1980's and 1990's. In 1965 West Bloomfield was mostly farmland, and didn't have anyone, Jews or otherwise.

[iheartthed]

Those maps hint at the not well understood nuance about Detroit's population decline. Slum clearing played a HUGE role in the city's population decline. This particular map is my favorite to explain the point:


Pulled from here: http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-detroit.html

Detroit in 1950 had some very densely populated census tracts in the core of the city. I did a rough calculation a while ago to figure out what was the 1950 population of the area commonly known today as Midtown (the rectangular block bounded by the freeways). I think the range I came up with was that it was at minimum 150,000 residents and the ceiling was something like 300,000 residents. I think today that area barely has 15,000 residents. This area in 1950 accounted for maybe 10% to perhaps 20% of the entire city's population.

Today that area accounts for maybe 2% of the population. The same areas that are today the least sparsely populated areas of the city were once the most densely populated. If you look closely at every single one of the most densely populated census tracts on the map you'll see that nearly all of them have a freeway going through them now, which did not exist in 1950. That was a major method of slum clearing in mid-20th century American cities. Detroit probably did it most successfully of major cities from that era. Couple the freeway building with the dismantling of Detroit's interurban and street car lines and massive population decline was the logical conclusion even without considering the social unrest and economic decline.

[memph]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Those maps hint at the not well understood nuance about Detroit's population decline. Slum clearing played a HUGE role in the city's population decline. This particular map is my favorite to explain the point:


Pulled from here: http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-detroit.html

Detroit in 1950 had some very densely populated census tracts in the core of the city. I did a rough calculation a while ago to figure out what was the 1950 population of the area commonly known today as Midtown (the rectangular block bounded by the freeways). I think the range I came up with was that it was at minimum 150,000 residents and the ceiling was something like 300,000 residents. I think today that area barely has 15,000 residents. This area in 1950 accounted for maybe 10% to perhaps 20% of the entire city's population.

Today that area accounts for maybe 2% of the population. The same areas that are today the least sparsely populated areas of the city were once the most densely populated. If you look closely at every single one of the most densely populated census tracts on the map you'll see that nearly all of them have a freeway going through them now, which did not exist in 1950. That was a major method of slum clearing in mid-20th century American cities. Detroit probably did it most successfully of major cities from that era. Couple the freeway building with the dismantling of Detroit's interurban and street car lines and massive population decline was the logical conclusion even without considering the social unrest and economic decline.

The Chrysler Freeway was built right through Hastings street which I believe was the heart of the black community at the time and the densest neighbourhood of Detroit. It would be like building a freeway down Yonge or Queen in Toronto.

Midtown was not as populated as you say though - I get about 83,000 people in 1950 using the old version of social explorer.
http://www.socialexplorer.com/89AACD3A4F1E4E1/explore

That's still a lot more than the 13-15k today of course. Most of central Detroit - not just Midtown - experienced quite a bit more intense population than the rest of the city, since as the maps show, population loss there started in the 50s while outer neighbourhoods were still growing (and then had a couple decades of relative stability).

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by memph

I'm not too sure what you're trying to argue.

My argument is basically you had a few different rings in which different things were happening, and those rings have been expanding outwards with time.

That's what I was trying to say too but more along the lines that the ring of whites and ring of blacks basically start from the same area (downtown) but progressed outward at different rates; whites significantly faster and wider and blacks significantly slower and more limited areas.

[memph]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

That's what I was trying to say too but more along the lines that the ring of whites and ring of blacks basically start from the same area (downtown) but progressed outward at different rates; whites significantly faster and wider and blacks significantly slower and more limited areas.

Wouldn't the blacks just have been following in the whites footsteps? When the Jews started moving out of Dexter Linwood in the 40s and 50s they were replaced by blacks, same goes with when they were starting to move out of the W Outer Drive area after the riots, and then Southfield in the last couple decades. So basically the blacks would have been moving outwards at a similar rate, but the Jews maybe had a head start?

Anyways, here's the white --> black transition zone for the 1940s.


vs population change in the 1940s


white --> black transition zone for the 1950s.


and population change in the 1950s


http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...hanges-in.html

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by memph

Midtown was not as populated as you say though - I get about 83,000 people in 1950 using the old version of social explorer.
http://www.socialexplorer.com/89AACD3A4F1E4E1/explore

That's still a lot more than the 13-15k today of course. Most of central Detroit - not just Midtown - experienced quite a bit more intense population than the rest of the city, since as the maps show, population loss there started in the 50s while outer neighbourhoods were still growing (and then had a couple decades of relative stability).

That seems legit. My assumption of the boundaries of today's midtown are I-75/Fisher Fwy to the South, I-75/Chrysler Fwy to the east, I-94/Ford Fwy to the north and Lodge to the west. Using the 83,000 number that would calculate the average density of the area to be a little over 40,000/square mile, which is in line with the density heat map.

I don't know how to use social explorer so that might've been a more painless way to do it, lol.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by memph

Wouldn't the blacks just have been following in the whites footsteps? When the Jews started moving out of Dexter Linwood in the 40s and 50s they were replaced by blacks, same goes with when they were starting to move out of the W Outer Drive area after the riots, and then Southfield in the last couple decades. So basically the blacks would have been moving outwards at a similar rate, but the Jews maybe had a head start?

In Metro Detroit the (middle and upper class) black population follows the Jewish population in lockstep. Every generation or so the Jewish population moves, and the more prosperous households in the black population take over. You see it even today, as West Bloomfield (the newest Jewish suburb) is now fast becoming black. I don't know where the Jews go after this, as there's no logical new suburb. I think the rich ones will just be integrated into Bloomfield-Birmingham (the richest suburb), the young ones will move to other metros, and the religious ones will stay in Oak Park (a working class suburb with some Orthodox).

Supposedly it's because the Jewish community was historically much less racist, so would be more willing to sell to blacks. If you did that back in the 1960's on the East Side of Detroit, in a working class white ethnic neighborhood, it would be a big deal to your neighbors.

Note how the (generally richer, nicer) West Side of Detroit "turned" racially long before the East Side of Detroit. There was a lot of working class resistance on the East Side. And it wasn't just racism, white East Siders couldn't just move to a nice suburb. Their home was pretty much their net worth. On the West Side, the more prosperous Jews and WASPs just left en masse as soon as racial transition was on their doorstep. Some of those neighborhoods are absolutely beautiful. Even today they aren't half-bad.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Crawford

In Metro Detroit the (middle and upper class) black population follows the Jewish population in lockstep. Every generation or so the Jewish population moves, and the more prosperous households in the black population take over. You see it even today, as West Bloomfield (the newest Jewish suburb) is now fast becoming black. I don't know where the Jews go after this, as there's no logical new suburb. I think the rich ones will just be integrated into Bloomfield-Birmingham (the richest suburb), the young ones will move to other metros, and the religious ones will stay in Oak Park (a working class suburb with some Orthodox).

Supposedly it's because the Jewish community was historically much less racist, so would be more willing to sell to blacks. If you did that back in the 1960's on the East Side of Detroit, in a working class white ethnic neighborhood, it would be a big deal to your neighbors.

Note how the (generally richer, nicer) West Side of Detroit "turned" racially long before the East Side of Detroit. There was a lot of working class resistance on the East Side. And it wasn't just racism, white East Siders couldn't just move to a nice suburb. Their home was pretty much their net worth. On the West Side, the more prosperous Jews and WASPs just left en masse as soon as racial transition was on their doorstep. Some of those neighborhoods are absolutely beautiful. Even today they aren't half-bad.

Similar pattern here in St. Louis. Mostly because Jews were the only ones willing to sell a house to a black person in a middle class suburban neighborhood in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc.

[memph]

Here are the maps for change in households/occupied housing units.

1940s


1950s


1960s


1970s


1980s


1990s


2000s


http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...mapped-by.html

[sharkfood]

This phenomenon happens all over the country and all over the world.

Cities, suburbs, everywhere.

As people age and die, they sell their homes. By the time they sell, the house may only have one occupant left - a widow or widower.

The buyer is more likely to be a large household. A married couple with kids, a single woman with kids, a multi-generational household, whatever.

The point is the passing of the older generation increases the population of the house and, as this effect is multiplied across a neighborhood, it increases the population of the neighborhood.

[memph]

Originally Posted by sharkfood

This phenomenon happens all over the country and all over the world.

Cities, suburbs, everywhere.

As people age and die, they sell their homes. By the time they sell, the house may only have one occupant left - a widow or widower.

The buyer is more likely to be a large household. A married couple with kids, a single woman with kids, a multi-generational household, whatever.

The point is the passing of the older generation increases the population of the house and, as this effect is multiplied across a neighborhood, it increases the population of the neighborhood.

True, but as the older generation dies/move away and are replaced by younger generations with kids, the generation in between would also be seeing their children move out, so you wouldn't necessarily expect household sizes to decrease. I think you'd expect the household sizes to decrease as you go from just families with kids to a more diverse mix, but you'd expect household sizes to reach an equilibrium, rather than increasing again.