Upward Neighborhood Succession and Class Segregation from 1970 to 2009

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Residential Segregation

Abstract

The literature on upward neighborhood succession, or neighborhood change from a predominately lower to a predominately higher socio-economic composition, has largely focused on low-income neighborhoods through gentrification. While the gentrification literature suggests income integration, the literature on income segregation suggests a growing distance between the rich and the poor over time. While studies of “hyper” or “super” gentrification suggest that upward neighborhood succession could contribute to increasing income segregation, this scholarship is recent and relatively limited. This paper addresses these gaps in the urban literature by analyzing the broader process of upward neighborhood succession by income composition. Using Census data from 275 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, I find that despite the predominance of gentrification in the literature, higher income census tracts make up approximately two-thirds to three-quarters of all upward tracts between 1970 and 2009. In fact, in three of the four decades, low-income tracts were equally likely to experience upward succession as some higher income tracts. These patterns of upward succession reflect both complementing and competing processes to income segregation. Thus, high rates of upward succession among high income tracts seems to contribute to increasing income segregation, while high rates among low income tracts seems to slow patterns of income segregation. These findings suggest that a number of competing and complementing processes are at work in a broader spatial reorganization of class in the United States. Understanding these processes and how they interact across all neighborhoods is central our understanding of inequality in the lived environment.

Author

• Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana, University of California-Berkeley