In This Article
Subscribe to National Updates
Boston, MA
Cities See Changing Demographics as Urban Life Becomes More Desirable
August 06, 2008 7:59 AM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Cities across America are seeing an influx of affluent residents moving into city centers, while low-income individuals are pushed to the outskirts.
Email This30-Second Summary
America is undergoing a “demographic inversion,” writes Alan Ehrenhalt in The New Republic magazine.
Lower crime and deindustrialization have made cities a more desirable place to live. In the meantime, high energy prices have become a burden to suburbanites, to the extent that some urban policy experts are predicting the death of the suburban way of life.
Cities are also seeing a reversal in racial trends after decades of white flight, reports the Wall Street Journal. Some large cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites in their populations increase in recent years for the first time in years.
Ehrenhalt posits that young people, many who grew up in suburbs, are rejecting the uniformity of cul-de-sac life for the vibrant, urban lifestyle that they saw portrayed in television shows.
Despite concerns about the effects of gentrification, the displacement of low-income and minority individuals, and the abandonment of the suburbs, Ehrenhalt sees the trend as a positive development. “As we arrange ourselves and around many of our big cities, we are groping toward the new communities of the twenty-first century,” he writes.
But David Villeneuve of Orleans, Canada, defends suburban life against its critics in the Ottawa Citizen. “The phases of our lives determine where we choose to live. The young and the old might prefer urban living, with its proximity to all their needs. Young families want to be near other young families, with safe streets and parks and schools. They want to live in suburbia. Why is that wrong?”
Lower crime and deindustrialization have made cities a more desirable place to live. In the meantime, high energy prices have become a burden to suburbanites, to the extent that some urban policy experts are predicting the death of the suburban way of life.
Cities are also seeing a reversal in racial trends after decades of white flight, reports the Wall Street Journal. Some large cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites in their populations increase in recent years for the first time in years.
Ehrenhalt posits that young people, many who grew up in suburbs, are rejecting the uniformity of cul-de-sac life for the vibrant, urban lifestyle that they saw portrayed in television shows.
Despite concerns about the effects of gentrification, the displacement of low-income and minority individuals, and the abandonment of the suburbs, Ehrenhalt sees the trend as a positive development. “As we arrange ourselves and around many of our big cities, we are groping toward the new communities of the twenty-first century,” he writes.
But David Villeneuve of Orleans, Canada, defends suburban life against its critics in the Ottawa Citizen. “The phases of our lives determine where we choose to live. The young and the old might prefer urban living, with its proximity to all their needs. Young families want to be near other young families, with safe streets and parks and schools. They want to live in suburbia. Why is that wrong?”
Headline Link: 'Trading Places'
Ehrenhalt is optimistic that the rejuvenation of America's cities will have a positive effect on community life, which many academics and journalists had thought to be in decline. "We will never return—nor would most of us want to return—to the close-knit but frequently constricting form of community life that prevailed 50 years ago. But, as we rearrange ourselves and around many of our big cities, we are groping toward the new communities of the twenty-first century."
Source: The New Republic
Related Topics: The end of suburbia; town tries to buy its population; white flight
Some urban policy experts are predicting that rising oil prices may end the suburban way of life, as oil tops $120 per barrel. Suburbs could become ghost towns, as Americans make a shift away from its beloved car-powered suburban culture of shopping malls, subdivisions and box retailers that was previously made possible by low gasoline prices and modern freeways.
Source: findingDulcinea
A small farming community in rural Minnesota is paying people to move there, hoping to rejuvenate the local economy. But can rural America be resuscitated? Luverne, Minn., a county seat with a population of about 4,000, has clean air, safe parks and new development. The agricultural town is so confident that people will fall in love with its charms that it is offering $2,000 per member of a family that buys one of 15 city-owned lots and builds a new home there.
Source: findingDulcinea
The era of white flight is over, reports The Wall Street Journal. In most cities in the U.S., the decline in their white population has slowed, while in some cases has even reversed. William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, says that Census data suggests that white flight reached its peak in the 1990s.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Opinion & Analysis: Standing up for the suburbs
"Upon my return to Canada, it was an enormous relief to sit in my suburban back yard, to hear the birds, to smell the trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass. I could feel my blood pressure go down," David Villeneuve said after returning from the urban jungles of China. "Yet those calling for urban intensification in Ottawa would say that I am wrong to enjoy my lifestyle."
Source: Ottawa Citizen
© 2008 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
