U.S. losing its middle-class neighborhoods

 

Metro areas show widening gap between rich and poor sections

By Blaine Harden

The Washington Post

 

INDIANAPOLIS - Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at more than twice the rate of the middle class itself. In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a Brookings Institution study released today. It found that as a share of all urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation's 100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.

 

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447899/page/2/

Is this an article about income segregation or the dwindling middle class?  Rich and poor people living in the same neighborhood does not make it a "middle class" neighborhood.  Middle class people make middle class neighborhoods.  So if middle class neighborhoods are disappearing, then would that mean the middle class is disappearing as well.  Or is the author using the term "middle class neighborhood" to mean those that are not highly segregated by income.

^Great point.

hmm well id say ask the author, but it doesnt sound like they meant it like rich+poor in one neighborhood = middling income neighborhood.  I took it as the neighborhoods that had middle income residents are thinning out and in decline and thus the process is sped up on top of the fact that these people have more mobility to move away to wealthier suburbs with better schools and more space. 

 

  I took it to mean that neighborhoods are becoming more segregated economically, by means of richer people moving to exclusive neighborhoods.

 

  This was the key line:

 

    "But it speculates that a sorting-out process is underway in the nation's suburbs and inner cities, with many previously middle-income neighborhoods now tipping rich or poor."

 

The housing industry in the Midwest and the Northeast routinely floods local markets with new, ever-larger houses. In greater Indianapolis, more than 27,500 houses were constructed between 2000 and 2004, even though the population grew by only 3,000.

 

In the process, older houses and many older neighborhoods -- such as McCray's -- have become as disposable as used cars.

 

Welcome to metro Dayton.

 

Such overbuilding is rampant across the Midwest and Northeast, where the number of new houses -- almost always at the edge of metro areas -- swamped the number of new households by more than 30 percent between 1980 and 2000, according to a study co-written by Thomas Bier, executive in residence at the Center for Housing Research and Policy at Cleveland State University.

 

I'd love to see that study.  I wonder if its published anywhere, or online.

 

 

"But it speculates that a sorting-out process is underway in the nation's suburbs and inner cities, with many previously middle-income neighborhoods now tipping rich or poor."

 

I can see that sorting process happen here in the Centerville/Washington Township area.  The houses built here in the late 1940s and 1950s where not necessarily that large, but as this has become an upper middle class area the values are higher here now, and new construction is more upscale than what was built here 40 to 50 years ago.

 

This has even led to a few "teardowns", where a 1950s ranch is torn down for one of those supersized houses one sees in the newer plats.  I've seen at least two examples of this in the Centerville area.

 

 

 

 

 

27k houses were constructed in Indianapolis but how many were demolished?

I'd love to see that study.  I wonder if its published anywhere, or online.

 

I think this is it. Even if it isn't, this is still a very interesting report, and well worth reading...

 

http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/publications/20031205_Bier.pdf

This study is alarming but not surprising.