Poverty Moves to the Suburbs

[JManc]

I can't help think there's not some bragging involved regarding how many rich people there are in one's hometown...

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by JManc

I can't help think there's not some bragging involved regarding how many rich people there are in one's hometown...

You could argue both ways -- bragging about how many rich billionaires live in your city as a sign of how world class it is, versus bragging how affordable and down-to-earth your city is for the common person, unlike those other ridiculously overpriced places... etc.

[CherryCreek]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

You could argue both ways -- bragging about how many rich billionaires live in your city as a sign of how world class it is, versus bragging how affordable and down-to-earth your city is for the common person, unlike those other ridiculously overpriced places... etc.

Good points. We need to separate facts - facts like average incomes and housing prices - from our analysis of impacts. As you note, whether a particular fact is good or bad depends on who you are and what your values are.

Denver has attracted tons of highly educated millennials which has helped stoke its booming economy. I think that's good. But that's driven up the price of housing so much that many renters can hardly afford it - that's bad. Unless you are are a real estate investor or developer, in which case that's really, really good. Ironically, some of those millennials who came to the city and helped start this cycle are now leaving the city as its become too expensive and, in their view, less desirable.

In Denver, as elsewhere, an increasing trend is that people who have been here for a long time and who own their own homes (which were very affordable when they bought them) don't like the growth and want people - rich or otherwise - to stop moving here. It is likely there will be a ballot initiative capping growth for the Colorado Front Range cities at 1% annually (as measured by housing permits). It may very well pass. The net effect would likely be to further drive prices higher, as supply is constricted.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Hillsborough is an older suburb, and nowhere near the sprawl fringe. It also sits smack dab in the Peninsula (region's favored quarter) with SF to the north and Silicon Valley to the south. It seems to be a pretty classic example of a top-tier suburb.

A suburb can be old and central and nowhere near the metropolitan core. Westport, CT is probably a good 35 miles from Manhattan but would generally be considered rather old and well-located, with top-tier prices and nothing resembling modern sprawl.

In the case of Canada, it's often a case that the earlier suburban development came with larger lots, and of course the better locations get developed earlier, so the earlier suburbs that started in the 40s-60s are often quite desirable. New suburbs tend to have small lots so the large lots of the older post-WWII suburbs get redeveloped into 4000+ sf mansions. See Oakville, North York, North Vancouver, Etobicoke...

Oakville is the most far flung of those but still benefits from good rail access to downtown Toronto and proximity to a waterfront that has less industry than the eastern suburbs, and fewer lower income apartment complexes than more close in suburbs like Scarborough that were more closely integrated into Toronto at the time of their development.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by CherryCreek

This thread is titled "Poverty Moves to Suburbs," focusing (at least originally) on the fact that gentrifying cities are pushing the poor into older ring suburbs.

Of course, the shake up in population and the geographic redistribution of income groups is more complex than that - -it's not quite so binary.

It's not just the "rich" replacing the "poor", it sometime the "very rich" replacing the "merely rich" or the "upper middle income" replacing the "middle income." Also, it's not just within an MSA or CSA, but between cities and between states.

The Denver Post has an interesting article today about how (relatively) well paid individuals are moving from high-cost coastal locations (such a California) and finding the now inflated Denver property values as "affordable" (as compared to where they came from), thereby driving Denver prices higher. This in turn is pushing others (who can no longer afford Denver's "high prices") away from Denver into even more affordable cities.

I suppose this is how free markets are supposed to work.


https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/1...ng-low-income/

Yes and its also not always going to be true "doughnuts" At least in Phoenix the Current layout is everything from the central downtown North + East is a mix of Upper middle class- wealthy (or will soon be due to gentrification) this goes from the downtown itself all the way out to the far northeast Ex-urb of Cave Creek. In sort of a half circle from directly south of the CBD curving westward all the way back to Directly north of some very wealthy inner neighborhoods is the poorest part of the city by far transitioning beyond that to working class and then a few higher class neighborhoods in the far fringes.

To the South-east its a bit different, we have our secondary CBD with Tempe and then South and east you have middle class - high class suburban areas, directly east of Tempe are fairly blighted areas and then working class mostly directly east until you hit mountains. And of course a smattering of wealthy Exurbs on the fringes.

Part of this is due to political geography in the form of Reservations and actual mountains that can be night and day class-wise from one side to the next.

[Sun Belt]

Cities are more like slices of pizza than donuts. A couple wedges of upper middle class from the center to the periphery and then there are wedges of poverty, low income, working class.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Cities are more like slices of pizza than donuts. A couple wedges of upper middle class from the center to the periphery and then there are wedges of poverty, low income, working class.

this analogy pleases Pizza God.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Cities are more like slices of pizza than donuts. A couple wedges of upper middle class from the center to the periphery and then there are wedges of poverty, low income, working class.

What about states?

[COtoOC]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I feel like there's basically two styles of new-build suburban housing, discounting what's architect-designed.

1. Faux-Spanish: used in the Southwest, California, and Florida.
2. Generic - used everywhere else.

There are some differences in details from area to area. For example, houses clad in brick are common in the south, and uncommon in the north, because labor costs are so much cheaper. However, that's really not the same thing as a vernacular.

I notice that in each metro area, the builders seem to mimic one another so you get the same looking houses over and over. But they slowly change over the decades.

In Denver, all the 60s houses in different suburban cities are extremely similar, same in the 70s, etc. Today, it's all the earth-tone neo-Craftsman style with stack stone, brick and hardie board siding. I don't understand why so many different builders do that... build the exact same style as other builders and use the same materials.

The worst I've seen is metro Kansas City. The houses from the 60s to late 80s all have this horrible batten board siding on the sides and backs of all houses (that doesn't hold paint). Then around 1990, they switched over to this paneling on the sides and backs of all houses that looks like what you'd build a tool shed out of, and it warps. At least in metro Denver, the architectural detailing on the front of houses continues around the sides and backs.

And then the SE seems to build new homes with vinyl siding

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by JManc

What about states?

It get's a little messy with states.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

It get's a little messy with states.

illinois gets to wear it's deep-dish badge proudly.

but new york state is painted with buffalo wings.

ouch.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Cities are more like slices of pizza than donuts. A couple wedges of upper middle class from the center to the periphery and then there are wedges of poverty, low income, working class.

I approve of this. Some slices poor, some working, some high, crust is exurbs, Pepperonis are suburban town centers.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

illinois gets to wear it's deep-dish badge proudly.

but new york state is painted with buffalo wings.

ouch.

A Buffalonian with their 'pop' and nasally accents created that map. We should have kicked their asses out of the state long ago.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

LOL the areas Im talking about are not poor areas becoming gentrified, rather areas that are usually long established as posh so...


Why should there be irony? I have zero qualms about the fact that I like data about wealthy areas. So what?

I'm not here to kink shame. Research whatever you wish. It would be a bit weird if you were happy that there are fewer poor and working class people in the Bay. It'd be one thing if the economy was lifting these people out of poverty, but that's not the case in the Bay. They're priced out entirely. That's a bit different than what's happening elsewhere.

[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by Docere

A lot of people seem to have an "aesthetic" definition of sprawl - cookie cutter subdivisions, big box stores etc.

So more "bucolic" suburbs like Lexington Mass., Westchester County, Philadelphia's Main Line etc. don't count.

A very concise analysis of the continuous sprawl/density debate here.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Cities are more like slices of pizza than donuts. A couple wedges of upper middle class from the center to the periphery and then there are wedges of poverty, low income, working class.

"Wedge cities" and "donut cities":

http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?cityincome

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Docere

"Wedge cities" and "donut cities":

http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?cityincome

People are taking the doughnut theory too literally. It’s an abstraction of the kind of income sorting we see in cities, based largely on the monoentric city model that underlies our understanding of general city structure.

But of course cities are more than just a CBD to which all workers commute. There are coastlines and parks and airports, all of which have either amenity or productive value, and therefore impact how people sort themselves across the city. So, for example, we see a wealthy wedge along the coast in LA and a wealthy wedge along Lake Michigan in Chicago. But, if you were to control for proximity to the lake, i.e. look at the income gradient of the wedge along the Lake, you’ll find that the wealthy live close to the Loop, then there’s a dip, and then it rises again as you get to the North shore suburbs.