The Stages of Neighborhood Transition

This chapter outlines the “stage model of gentrification” and neighborhood transition in Northeast LA through historical periods of emergence of the streetcar suburbs, then decline with the rise of outer freeway suburbs and white flight followed by residential succession by incoming Latin American and Asian immigrants. The presence of a revitalization stage involving immigrant pioneers and homesteaders, followed by speculator investors and more affluent gentrifiers is outlined. There follows analysis of U.S. Census of Population and Housing data on racial/ethnic transition and the recomposition of the household structure. Business data are presented that explores the sectoral profile of enterprises and identify growth trends.

Does the EITC Buffer against Neighborhood Transition? Evidence from Washington, DC

Gentrification in major cities has led to concerns that poor and nonwhite residents are being displaced. This paper uses administrative data on tax filing households in Washington DC to examine the potential role that increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) plays in the location choices of the working poor. Its principal findings suggest small effects of the EITC on move decisions. Married households with dependents who received increased EITC payments are slightly more likely to remain in gentrifying neighborhoods. By contrast, single parent filers receiving EITC payments are more likely to exit these neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Change under Conditions of Mass Immigration: The New York City Region, 1970–1990

This article investigates the shifting racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods in the Greater New York metropolitan region in the 1970–1990 period, during which the region has been one of the nation's major receiving grounds for new immigrant groups. Neighborhoods are defined in terms of census tracts, and changes in neighborhood composition are tracked with data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses. Four racial/ethnic groups are considered: non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The analysis, which exploits the neighborhood transition table (Denton and Massey, 1991), reveals a somewhat paradoxical set of developments. On the one hand, there is increasing racial and ethnic complexity in neighborhoods throughout the region: more and more neighborhoods contain multiple groups; fewer and fewer are ethnically or racially homogeneous. On the other hand, there is a crosscutting trend: all-minority neighborhoods, occupied by blacks or blacks and Hispanics, are growing in number. We demonstrate further that these two patterns are associated with other characteristics of neighborhoods, such as the median incomes of their households and whether they are located in cities or suburbs.